S.M.A.R.T. status from external USB SSD?

AFAIK, only binaryfruits (developer of DriveDx) has a macOS driver to communicate with a USB drive to access the USB drive's health information. I thought at one time the driver was available separately to download from their site. I know the driver is installed when using DriveDx to attempt to access the SMART information from a USB drive.

Which USB drives allow access to the SMART health information? I don't know as it depends on the USB chipset used by the external drive's enclosure (or adapter, dock, hub, etc.). The USB chipsets used by the USB enclosures/adapters/docks/hubs can change at any time and sometimes the current product line may include multiple USB chipsets from different vendors. Personally I've never had a problem with any enclosure or adapter utilizing the ASMedia USB chipsets. I've used USB adapters and enclosures from Plugable and StarTech. I know some of the OWC drive docks don't allow SMART communication to the drive. I'm not sure about the OWC enclosures as I'm not sure I ever tested them for accessing SMART information.

FYI, most of the apps such as DriveDx which check the SMART health status don't tend to correctly interpret the health of an SSD as there are a lot of false failures listed. You need to understand how to read and interpret the SMART attributes & information to try to get an understanding of an SSD's health. Even manually interpreting the data does not give you firm answers as to the health of an SSD. It definitely takes practice to get any inkling of the true health of an SSD since some of those attributes do not mean fatal issue. Many SSDs today don't really provide enough useful SMART health attributes to adequately judge the health of an SSD.

Just decided to check and the DriveDx website actually lists a github page with the driver. The DriveDx page here also includes the instructions for various versions of macOS:

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/usb-drive-support

Generally you won't get that status on an external drive.

http://www.binaryfruit.com

offers the ability to scan for SMART status on external drives with its DriveDX softtware.

Drive Scope and TechTool Pro also offer an option to install drivers to read SMART parameters from external drives. You can download their manuals which provide information on what type of drives this works for. Note the caveats by HWTech and others, some of these tools are imperfectly implemented.

Contact Customer Support at OWC (MacSales.com) and ask them if their external SSD would support SMART via DriveDX. They are the premier 3rd party Mac hardware provider. They offer a variety of external SSDs and am sure one will fit your needs and budget.

I would contact http://www.binaryfruit.com support and ask.

Preaching instead of answer, gotta love it!

Thanks. I also need the compatible SSD with enclosure. What works with the driver?

I you (anyone!) have gotten SMART status from an external USB SSD, what driver and hardware do you have? Help is appreciated!

SMART status is nice and brings warm fuzzy feelings but I would not trust it anyway. Good backups is more important.

Thanks, I send an inquiry. Their site is full of information, but I didn’t find a list of drives that work with their driver.

Thank you, really good info. I’m still hopeful that someone has recently bought a drive/housing that returns the status, and will say what they bought.