i think i've got a failing drive and the "first aid" from the disk utility just tells me the disk is verified. i don't trust something so dumbed down to give me the complete answer, is there a "real" hard drive testing app out there?
Posted Sep 5, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC
First Aid just checks the volume format/file structures. Drive can easily be failing.
Sometimes you'll see disk errors in the log, pre unified logging I'd see things like disk0 I/O error (I'd usually just search for disk0) or disk0 ERROR UNDEFINED which indicated a bad sector.
I'd be wary of relying on SMART though, I've usually seen machines have issues long before SMART picks up on errors.
Do you actually have a spinning disk or is it an SSD?
SMART FAILURE = definitely failing, SMART PASS = might be failing
Do you actually have a spinning disk or is it an SSD?
these are spinny drives on 2012 iMacs
Yeah if you do end up cracking it, I would highly recommend just putting an SSD in there. 2.5-3.5 adapters are pretty cheap and SSDs are now too. They're such a pain to disassemble that I have a rule. It gets taken apart ONCE. If it gets cracked for any reason it gets an SSD.
i really hate the way macs make you buy third party software to do basic things built into the hardware. $25 for something that should be baked into the OS
Disk Utility doesn't check SMART parameters -- it is simply verifying the structure of the file system itself. I'd suggest your Mac's built in diagnostics test as a first step, and see if you pop a hardware problem code. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731
I’d recommend DriveDX by binary fruit. I use it on a daily basis for client machines.
As many have pointed out, smartmontools in it's many forms. What hasn't been said, and can't be said enough...
#BACK UP THE DATA YOU CARE ABOUT!
smartmontools and Smart Utility are the first two answers here, first two I'd have gone with too
The SMART status in Disk Utility is entirely trustworthy, it's just simplistic. If there are serious SMART errors, the status will show as failing.
You can use disktuil info disk<disknumberhere> | grep SMART
But that's the same level of info.
Past that, you can use smartmontools for free, but if you rely on a GUI then yah, go with DriveDx, great app and lets you use it for free as a fully functional trial for the first many launches or days forget which.
https://www.smartmontools.org/