High Sierra: Go with latest version of Smartmontools?

[rib00]

tldr - see "my main question" below.

I recently bought a MacBook Air 2017. Last night, I installed High Sierra on it. (I downloaded from the App store and it turned out to be High Sierra 10.13.6. I want to get an idea of the health of the drive. I think that I exhausted the functionality of Disk Utility. So, I am looking for the next step.

Smartmontools seems reasonable.
It might also be reasonable to write all 0's to the disk. But, that puts wear and tear and I already missed the easy opportunity to do that. (The time to do that would have been before installing High Sierra.) Also, I get the sense that the computer did not have heavy usage prior to my ownership. (But, previous sentence is a lot of speculation.)

I am open to suggestions on any of this.

My main question
Should I try the latest version of Smartmontools even though my OS is old?
I see that there are a lot of older versions still available for download.

Making sure you're not a bot!

Nov 5, 2017 Release 6.3
to
May 12, 2025 Release 7.5

I searched the release notes "High Sierra" and "10.13" and nothing came up. So, there are no clues to go off of there.

I will probably grab an older version, too, because the hosting could end for some. Maybe whatever was released ~ 1.5 years after High Sierra. that way, have it as an alternative for later.

 

[chrfr]

Just try the current one and if it installs and runs that's all you need to know.

 

[Bigwaff]

Just use DriveDx

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

 

[rib00]

Just use DriveDx

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility

DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.

binaryfruit.com

TYVM
Do you think it's reasonably easy to uninstall after the trial period?

 

[!!!]

You could install it from MacPorts, which purports to work with 10.13.

 

[rib00]

You could install it from MacPorts, which purports to work with 10.13.

I am a little confused.
I guess it has been compiled (or maybe you, the end user compile it yourself), and it might be compiled a little differently than the one that I mentioned in the OP?

the mystery remains around this Darwin guy or Darwin platform. I want it renamed to Bigwaff in honor of our excellent forum member 🙂

 

[!!!]

I guess it has been compiled (or maybe you, the end user compile it yourself), and it might be compiled a little differently than the one that I mentioned in the OP?

The version 7.5 you mention is compiled for macOS 11.0 and later. The version from MacPorts has been compiled for 10.13 specifically. Whether this is just a rebuild with a different target OS version or uses patches, I don't know. MacPorts contributors are known to help patch software to continue running on older OS versions.

 

[Apathist]

I will probably grab an older version, too, because the hosting could end for some. Maybe whatever was released ~ 1.5 years after High Sierra.

FWIW, I've been running 7.2 probably since its release (2020) under 10.13.6.

 

[rib00]

The version from MacPorts has been compiled for 10.13 specifically. Whether this is just a rebuild with a different target OS version or uses patches, I don't know. MacPorts contributors are known to help patch software to continue running on older OS versions.

I don't understand how to download from Macports
Click on the "build" tab?
When I do, it says "The server at ports.macports.org sent back an error: 403 Forbidden."

 

[!!!]

I don't understand how to download from Macports
Click on the "build" tab?
When I do, it says "The server at ports.macports.org sent back an error: 403 Forbidden."

Sorry, from your previous posts you had indicated you had experience with Linux, so I guessed you may be already familiar with package managers. MacPorts is a package manager for Mac, similar to Homebrew, if you've heard of that. To install a package from there, you'll want to install MacPorts itself, then install the relevant package with sudo port install smartmontools.

 

[rib00]

...MacPorts is a package manager for Mac, similar to Homebrew, if you've heard of that. To install a package from there, you'll want to install MacPorts itself, then install the relevant package with sudo port install smartmontools.

My experience with package managers is that they have mostly been there "out of the box" so I have never installed a package manager. By "out of the box" I mean that they have been after finishing the default install of the operating system.
Thank you for clarifying that MacPorts is a package manager.
I am a bit of a newb. I still need to learn how to speak Github 🙂