Version 0.10 is the most current at the time of writing and even though it’s 6 years old, it still works great in macOS Mojave (I have not tested this in Catalina). DriveDx does not offer this feature but the SAT SMART driver is free and open source so you can grab it here and use it with any software you’d like. Not only does macOS not leverage this driver once it’s installed, the fact that such a driver is not part of the OS by default is preposterous if you ask me. This driver allows the software to monitor the SMART status of external drives over USB or FireWire, a very very nice feature. SMART Utility has an option that allows you to install a SAT SMART Driver. There are many applications that offer SMART monitoring but the two I just mentioned are my favorites. Another very good app is SMART Utility which also does a good job interpreting the data. Their interpretation of SMART data is very much to my liking and warns immediately when an issue is found. So, Disk Utility and macOS won’t warn us, what are the alternatives? In that folder are examples of hard drives that have hundreds and thousands of errors, clicking, rattling and experiencing issues to the point where they are barely or not at all usable, and Disk Utility shows SMART status is “verified”! I’m very annoyed I can’t find this folder but I hope I’ve built enough credit so you’ll take my word for it. I know I have a folder full of screenshots like these *somewhere* but after an hour of searching I can’t find it. Oh, and 3rd party software has no problem reading the SMART status of external drives. The drive is obviously experiencing something and Disk Utility feels it is not important enough to let us know. So the drive must be OK, right? Here’s what DriveDx shows: However when I put this drive in my Mac Pro, I see this: That’s right, Disk Utility can’t check the SMART status of external drives, another serious bummer. I hooked it up to an external USB enclosure and checked it out in Disk Utility. One example, here is a 500GB hard drive that suddenly started reallocating sectors (more on this later). We might as well be back in the PPC days where SMART was not even a thing and the only way we’d know a drive had problems is when it simply stopped working or made horrible shrieking noises. As far as I’m concerned, macOS has no SMART monitoring or warning, at all. Disk Utility is of course an application very few regular users will ever open, let alone open frequently to check their drive’s SMART status. macOS has no mechanism to alert you of a SMART issue! You won’t know something is wrong until you open Disk Utility. In the case of an operating system such as macOS, SMART data interpretation is so conservative, the drive has to be on fire for it to think “hmm, there may be an issue here!”. Some like to have incredibly sensitive software that alerts at the first hint of trouble (I’m one of them) and there are some that don’t want to be bothered until SMART errors start spewing out with every rotation of the platters. While this can be annoying and confusing, it’s also a good thing for most power users. This is why if you have the same failing drive and connect it to different computers, running different operating systems, and using different applications, you’ll likely get different results every single time. SMART spits out raw data and it’s up to the operating system or application to interpret that data. Alas we are Mac users and one thing the macOS is just absolutely terrible at, is interpreting SMART parameters and notifying users of issues! Interpreting? Yes. In a perfect world, SMART can warn you if issues arise and give you enough time to make sure your backups are in order before the drive dies completely or becomes unreliable to the point of data corruption and/or system instability. (for the remainder of this article I will just type ‘SMART’ as I can’t be bothered with all those periods) Its primary function is to detect and report various indicators of drive reliability with the intent of anticipating imminent hardware failures.” (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and eMMC drives. So here’s a very short explanation of what S.M.A.R.T. Sure, readers of this blog are probably pretty in touch with their inner geek but you never know whom may stumble upon this article in the future. Status?”īeing a geek and neck deep in various tech projects every day for the last two decades it’s sometimes easy to forget there are people out there that may have never heard of something I take for granted. Me: “Sounds like the drive is failing, have you checked the S.M.A.R.T. Part of a conversation between me and my neighbor this week:
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