How to check SSD health in Lion?

[GameGuru38]

When I bought this used Mac Mini it already had an SSD in it so I am not sure how old it is or how much wear and tear it has received. All I do know is it is slower than the brand new SSDs I have put in my iMac and Windows PC and Windows laptop.

How can I check if the slowness of the Mac Mini is because of the SSD? The specs are close to my iMac so I would expect similar performance since they both have SSDs.

 

[grahamperrin]

… How to check the life left in SSD or the medium's wear level? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

SMART Utility | Volitans Software – there's a free trial. And there are free open source alternatives.

 

[JohnDS]

SMART Utility does not work with SSDs as far as I know.

 

[Weaselboy]

SMART Utility does not work with SSDs as far as I know.

It seems to work fine for me.

 

[CoastalOR]

I like DriveDX and it has a trial available.

 

[JohnDS]

@Weaselboy - you are correct. My older version didn't. There is also SSD Reporter available for $4 from the App Store.
[doublepost=1468246270][/doublepost]Apparently the SMART reports with SSDs are somewhat limited according to the SmartReporter FAQ:

Q: Does SMARTReporter work with SSDs?

A:

SMARTReporter "works" with SSDs in the sense that it recognizes them, and if they support S.M.A.R.T. it will check their summary-status and attributes and alert you if the status turns "failing". The question now is whether the SSD drive supports S.M.A.R.T. - which was designed to predict mechanical failures, which SSDs do not suffer from. However, SSDs also can also become broken, not because of mechanical failures but because of exhaustion of the limited number of write cycles. Some SSD drives report these write cycles as S.M.A.R.T. attribute (which can be inspecting by right clicking a drive in SMARTReporter) and report a failing S.M.A.R.T. summary status if the limit is approaching - in this case running SMARTReporter is just as useful as with a conventional drive - or even more so because only some mechanical failures can be predicted but the exhaustion of write cycles is determinable. To find out if your specific SSD drive does support S.M.A.R.T. - and to what extent - your best option is to ask your vendor. You can find out who is your vendor by going to "About Mac", then "System Report", and then choosing the item "Serial-ATA". Very often a Google search with that information will give you the answer you need. If not, the vendor's technical support will usually be able to provide you with the information. If all else fails, you may find help on the smartmontools support mailing list, but you will have to join in order to participate (or search the archives).
In case your SSD supports a 'SSD-health-attribute' the current health is always displayed in SMARTReporter's menu if you did not disable the automated S.M.A.R.T. attribute checking. Our complementary 'SSDReporter' supports even more comprehensive SSD-health checking with alerts when SSD-health decreases. Note that some SSDs do not support S.M.A.R.T. at all - see the question 'Which disks can SMARTReporter actually check for problems?'.​

 

[grahamperrin]

S.M.A.R.T. is popular but really not a reliable indicator of goodness.

A recent example, https://forums.pcbsd.org/thread-20833-post-114591.html#pid114591 points (1) and (3), consider the hundreds and thousands of errors. Those errors are with a drive (an SSHD) that was thoroughly tested at the block level; a drive that Disk Utility reports as verified.

I'm almost certain that the more advanced features of DriveDX would find no problem with that troublesome drive.

 

[romanaThree]

Hombrew can work on Lion. I used it to install the command line utility smartctl which is part of smartmontools. There is a GUI called gsmartcontrol but I cannot get it to compile on Homebrew/Lion. Anyway, it's just a front end so you can live without it if you read the man page on smartctl.