Any way to check SMART status on external

[agentphish]

Any way to really check for hardware failure on an external FW800 drive. I'm interested in being able to check for bad/pending sectors. SMART status on external drives is not supported in disk utility or SmartCTL

What else is out there?

 

[Intell]

I don't think there is any way. The USB/Firewire adapters that are used don't handle the SMART info. Only eSATA can check the SMART status of drives.

 

[agentphish]

hmm. I'm having trouble with access time on my WD studio quad interface over the network from my i5 MBP to my Mac Mini where the drive is hooked up.

I am not hearing any audible signs of failure so I don't know.

 

[FourCandles]

I don't think there is any way. The USB/Firewire adapters that are used don't handle the SMART info. Only eSATA can check the SMART status of drives.

That's my understanding too, at least on OS X. Plus, not all external enclosure pass on SMART data anyway.

 

[Erendiox]

hmm. I'm having trouble with access time on my WD studio quad interface over the network from my i5 MBP to my Mac Mini where the drive is hooked up.

I am not hearing any audible signs of failure so I don't know.

If you're accessing it wirelessly over the network, through a mac mini, over firewire, I wouldn't expect the access time to be all that awesome in the first place. You should plug it in directly and see if it performs as expected.

To further test it, I would back it up, if it's not already, and then run integrity checks. Drive Genius is a good program to use.