Apps to check HDD health of PPC Macs

[retta283]

I'm a bit worried that my iBook hard drive is dying, and want to check its health. Anybody know good programs to do this with?

I have been in an iBook G3 for HDD replacement, one of the hardest jobs I've done. I don't work on laptops often but this was terrible.

 

[amagichnich]

What about S.M.A.R.T. in disk utility? It Displays everything it an read

 

[retta283]

What about S.M.A.R.T. in disk utility? It Displays everything it an read

Disk Utility is rather basic and can fail to detect signs of drive health declining. There are more in depth apps, but of course they are made for an Intel Mac.

 

[Dronecatcher]

TechTool Pro 4.6.1 for PPC G3,G4,G5 - Macintosh Garden

TechTool Pro 4.6.1 for PPC G3,G4,G5 Should work on any machine capable of running MacOS 10.4 (Tiger). Use Disk Utility to burn the .dmg to a blank 4GB DVD and then boot from the DVD.

macintoshgarden.org

 

[netsrot39]

I use "SMART Utility" 3.0.2 on my iMac G5. It works great for the most part but for some reason it gives me a "FAILED" on my main drive even though it appears to be just working fine (which it is) in other SMART diagnostic applications. The other application I'm using is "SpeedTools Utilities Pro" which BTW can do benchmarks as well. I'd encourage you to find them legally but I know they can be found on certain Russian torrent sites too.

 

[eyoungren]

There's also SMART Reporter: https://www.corecode.io/smartreporter_lite/index.html

Personally, this is the app I use.

 

[amagichnich]

I use "SMART Utility" 3.0.2 on my iMac G5. It works great for the most part but for some reason it gives me a "FAILED" on my main drive even though it appears to be just working fine (which it is) in other SMART diagnostic applications. The other application I'm using is "SpeedTools Utilities Pro" which BTW can do benchmarks as well. I'd encourage you to find them legally but I know they can be found on certain Russian torrent sites too.

usually that means that the limit of failed sectors is reached and drive failure imminent. I wouldn't trust such a drive...

 

[netsrot39]

usually that means that the limit of failed sectors is reached and drive failure imminent. I wouldn't trust such a drive...

I've taken out the drive of that iMac before and plugged it externally via USB into several other Macs. Every other SMART application that I ran showed that the drive is OK. BTW the drive (SSD) only ran for like 100 hours which would be a big bummer if the alert is actually true.

 

[Project Alice]

I've taken out the drive of that iMac before and plugged it externally via USB into several other Macs. Every other SMART application that I ran showed that the drive is OK. BTW the drive (SSD) only ran for like 100 hours which would be a big bummer if the alert is actually true.

SMART doesn’t work externally, only on internal connections.
Also, if you’re using an older application that isn’t aware of the difference between and SSD and a hard disk, it’ll report it wrong too.
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/smart-and-ssds

 

[netsrot39]

SMART doesn’t work externally, only on internal connections.
Also, if you’re using an older application that isn’t aware of the difference between and SSD and a hard disk, it’ll report it wrong too.
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/smart-and-ssds

Actually it does work externally when using "SATSMARTDriver". Upon installation you can read SMART values with applications like DriveDx, Smart Utility and SMARTreporter. AFAIK the driver doesn't work with PowerPC but everything Intel starting from 10.6 should work (in fact I'm using it right now on my Snow Leopard installation)

 

[B S Magnet]

Actually it does work externally when using "SATSMARTDriver". Upon installation you can read SMART values with applications like DriveDx, Smart Utility and SMARTreporter. AFAIK the driver doesn't work with PowerPC but everything Intel starting from 10.6 should work (in fact I'm using it right now on my Snow Leopard installation)

Sidebar: what are you using to produce tabbed Finder windows in SL?

 

[netsrot39]

Sidebar: what are you using to produce tabbed Finder windows in SL?

The application is called "XtraFinder". It is pretty neat, it lets you customise Finder in many ways

 

[Project Alice]

Actually it does work externally when using "SATSMARTDriver". Upon installation you can read SMART values with applications like DriveDx, Smart Utility and SMARTreporter. AFAIK the driver doesn't work with PowerPC but everything Intel starting from 10.6 should work (in fact I'm using it right now on my Snow Leopard installation)

Interesting, that’s good to know. Wouldn’t it depend on the enclosure/whatever SATA bridge controller was being used? Or will it work with all external drives (FireWire?)?
I always thought that the lack of SMART on externals was a limitation of whatever controller was being used.

 

[netsrot39]

Interesting, that’s good to know. Wouldn’t it depend on the enclosure/whatever SATA bridge controller was being used? Or will it work with all external drives (FireWire?)?
I always thought that the lack of SMART on externals was a limitation of whatever controller was being used.

I've just tested it on my iMac (10.14.6). All USB hard disks I tested showed up in DriveDx and also another FireWire drive. The only thing that didn't work was attaching another Mac via Target Disk Mode and reading the SMART data that way.

 

[amp829]

Happy new year to everyone !
i have a MAC PRO 5.1 running mojave and had a significant hdd problem .
So my question is which is the best app for HDD health ?

 

[retta283]

Happy new year to everyone !
i have a MAC PRO 5.1 running mojave and had a significant hdd problem .
So my question is which is the best app for HDD health ?

Apps like DriveDX, Smart Utility and SMARTreporter should work well enough if the drive is already showing visible issues. IIRC these are free apps or at least have a free version you can try. You can get better apps as paid software but I'd recommend just sticking with the free ones for basic oversight.
Happy New Year.

 

[amp829]

-DriveDX is only for trial free and i have test it , it must be good and i don't mind to buy it
since i have lost my main hdd although using smart utility and another health app
and everything was seemed OK .
-smart utility is a crap , just basic . so i am not interested .
- SMARTreporter is difficult to understand what the conclusion is and is with payment also

thanks for your help !