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What software do you use to check your hard drives?
- Thread starter eurasian
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I had an Samsung SSD a couple of years back and decided to run "Samsung Magician" (Windows only) to check it out. It said, "Samsung Magician reports FAIL on Uncorrectable Error Count and ECC Error Rate". They swapped it for a new one.
No macOS software that I tried reported any errors.
No macOS software that I tried reported any errors.
I still have the last version (not the latest) of TechTool Pro. It's become increasingly not useful, and they charge for upgrades quite often. I didn't bite on the latest "offer".
Most of the existing "drive utility" apps have problems with newer Macs that have t2 chips.
Using Drive Genius 3.0 on my 2018 Mini, the APFS partition of the internal SSD doesn't even "show up".
And because Apple keeps much of "the guts" of APFS hidden from view (not documented), I sense that many "drive utility apps" are going to become irrelevant as Apple eventually moves towards t2-control of ALL of their Macs/drives.
These apps still work on EXTERNAL drives, and Macs without t2 chips.
But... their days are clearly numbered...
Using Drive Genius 3.0 on my 2018 Mini, the APFS partition of the internal SSD doesn't even "show up".
And because Apple keeps much of "the guts" of APFS hidden from view (not documented), I sense that many "drive utility apps" are going to become irrelevant as Apple eventually moves towards t2-control of ALL of their Macs/drives.
These apps still work on EXTERNAL drives, and Macs without t2 chips.
But... their days are clearly numbered...
This kind of failure should be reported by the “SMART status” that Disk Utility and System Information both show. macOS only reports whether the overall status is positive or negative (either “Verified” or “Failing”), it does not list the individual results of the status, such as the rate of uncorrectable errors. The drive itself reports these errors and its firmware determines what constitutes an impending drive failure.
I only know that it wasn't. Also, over the years I've had mechanical hard drives that were in such bad shape that they were making grinding noises…and First Aid in Disk Utility would say everything is fine.
Disk Warrior was the hands-down best Mac hard drive tool for diagnosing and repairing borked boot drives...before APFS and SSD.
As mentioned, post-APFS, the pickings are pretty slim.
Disk Drill (free version) is pretty handy for info, and has some nice tools too, like backing up to a DMG image, creating a USB boot drive/Mac OS installer, and a drive sizing tool. Pretty slick for free. Just have to deal with some light nagging to upgrade to PRO (paid recovery tool).
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As mentioned, post-APFS, the pickings are pretty slim.
Disk Drill (free version) is pretty handy for info, and has some nice tools too, like backing up to a DMG image, creating a USB boot drive/Mac OS installer, and a drive sizing tool. Pretty slick for free. Just have to deal with some light nagging to upgrade to PRO (paid recovery tool).
[automerge]1591339079[/automerge]
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Not free, but a few others:
Drive Genius
DriveRX
Disk Tester
Speed Tools was useful, but I think it has been abandoned. No updates for many years.
Drive Genius
DriveRX
Disk Tester
Speed Tools was useful, but I think it has been abandoned. No updates for many years.
Well, DriveRx would be a good name, but they chose DriveDx.
Ha...yes. I will leave it as is, so the joke works!