S.M.A.R.T. Errors on Catalina install

In any case, I have read ALL of those referenced threads and there are NO useful answers there. Just Apple people and others pontificating about what they think a solution might be. But NONE of those hypothetical solutions work. Because nobody has actually looked to SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

I any of those linked threads had comments from me, then I have explained the problem, but I will do so again here. If macOS or Disk Utility show a "SMART status: Failed", then it means the drive's internal health monitoring system has signaled to the OS that the SMART health monitoring system built into the drive has determined the drive has reached a failing state. Sometimes these "SMART status: Failed" messages may not always indicate an imminent failure especially when it pertains to an SSD, but if a hard drive has this error status, then the drive is really bad (most hard drives become unusable long before the SMART status ever reaches a Failed state). However, macOS provides no way of customizing the reporting so once the "SMART status: Failed" is triggered, there is nothing the user can do about it except to replace the drive.

Here is a wiki article about the SMART health monitoring built into the majority of hard drives and SSDs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

This article downplays the immediate failure of drives reporting SMART failures, but I can tell you from supporting thousands of computers for our organization for 20+ years, that if a hard drive starts to report certain SMART attribute changes, it usually means the drive should be replaced. Some hard drives may take a while for the failures to accumulate enough to cause major issues, while other times the failures increase very quickly. If I see certain SMART attributes on a hard drive report a negative change, I will replace the drive immediately just so the user is able to have a good experience with their computer since the drive has started to fail. It is like getting a nail in the car tire. Most times your tire will go flat overnight or within a few days while other times you can drive a long time with a nail in the tire without a problem. Same thing with a hard drive with certain SMART attributes reporting a bad change. With SSDs, things are a bit different since not all SMART issues are immediately a concern and requires manually interpreting the SMART health information/attributes and considering the workloads imposed on the SSD.

Apple is a "nanny" company wanting to shield their users from technical details and trying to keep their OS as simple as possible so even those users who know little about computers (or don't want/care to know -- which is fine) can use the Apple products fairly easily. So it is not surprising that when Apple detects a possible hardware issue, it will refuse to perform an action that could potentially render the computer immediately inoperable or cause data corruption (keep in mind an OS upgrade is a major undertaking and can stress a storage device which will reveal a latent already existing issue, but the issue is not noticeable yet with normal use). Plus the first time a new OS is installed, the installer requires updating the system firmware which insists on using only the internal drive to update the system firmware. You don't want to perform a system firmware update with faulty hardware since a botched firmware update can render the device a complete brick. The only way to recover from a botched firmware update is to have a very expensive repair involving the replacement of the Logic Board which with USB-C Macs would definitely cause data loss if the user did not have a good backup.

Basically a "SMART status Failed" most likely indicates a hardware failure or pending hardware failure with the drive. If you want to ignore such notices or have greater control over your device and OS, then you need to find & use another product and OS (non-Apple). Otherwise get the drive replaced if you want to upgrade macOS or remain on the current OS.

You can also provide Apple with product feedback here (Apple will not respond):

Product Feedback - Apple

If you want to communicate directly with Apple support, then use the "Get Support" link at the top right of this page.

It would have helped if more of these details were included in the original post.

Apple here is definitely using very simplistic & cautious interpretations. This was fine when Macs were just using hard drives, but SSDs are a bit different in their behavior. My guess is since Apple requires the internal drive for the system firmware update (and the internal drive must be an Apple OEM drive since macOS Monterey), that Apple wants to be extremely cautious since a botched system firmware could leave the Mac totally useless requiring an expensive repair.

About all you can do is provide Apple with product feedback here where maybe they will rethink the default macOS behavior (Apple won't respond):

Product Feedback - Apple

You can also contact Apple corporate to voice your displeasure of not being able to upgrade macOS due to the SMART failing status even though the SSD is still working just fine (Apple may respond if you correspond much more politely than you have done here):

Contact - How to Contact Us - Apple

Of course neither of these options will help you at the moment. If you want to proceed with the upgrade of macOS you will need to replace the SSD since I doubt the macOS will allow you to install to an external drive since the installer requires updating the system firmware the first time it installs a new OS. Another complication is the macOS installer will not upgrade the system firmware is a third party SSD is installed internally. If you have a Fusion Drive setup, then you could break the Fusion Drive so the internal hard drive can be used to install the macOS upgrade. With the Monterey installer, after the system firmware was updated, then the Monterey installer could be used to install macOS with just the third party internal SSD installed. I don't know if the same will apply to Ventura, and whether the same may apply to a drive with SMART Status Failing.

This will be my last post in this thread because you are obviously too angry to be civil & courteous even to the one person who has stayed on this thread to try to assist you. I wish you well.

Then run DriveDx and post the complete text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper so we can examine the health information on your drive to see if it has any clues. Make sure to post the report for both the SSD and the hard drive.

they will not answer you here

This is a user forum, you are not addressing apple here  just  fellow users

try reading

S.M.A.R.T. error - Apple Community

S.M.A.R.T error - Apple Community

more

Search - Apple Community

you can try contacting apple Support ->  Get Support (apple.com)

and or give them feedback -> Product Feedback - Apple

You claim the contributors here are mis-informed, but you refuse to post the DriveDx report I asked for so I could examine the drive's health report to see if there is something in it that may be triggering macOS to report a SMART failure. I have years of experience reading the health reports of drives so I may see something significant or even see how macOS may be interpreting the health status to report a failure. Even with all these years of experience I am still learning how to properly interpret these reports. Unfortunately diagnostics of any sort usually don't detect most hardware failures in my own personal experience. Diagnostics are usually only useful when they report an error or when the tests freeze the system. It is kind of like a doctor running their myriad of tests on a patient. Sometimes the tests will all come back with no signs of any problems, but does that mean the patient is healthy even though they may be unable to get out of bed?

Don't get me wrong, I can understand your frustration with not being able to upgrade the OS due to an error which you currently cannot prove or understand, plus I agree that Apple has been making some very poor design decision in my opinion, but they have also made a few good ones as well.

If you want to post the DriveDx report I will be glad to look at it to see if I may see anything in it which will trigger a possible failure notice since my understanding of how macOS works in this regard may be outdated if Apple changed how macOS handles these things.

While writing this response, I did think of a very likely possibility of why macOS may be refusing to upgrade the OS. Does your Mac use a third party internal drive? While I would not expect a problem with this setup for installing Catalina, it is possible there is something about how the drive appears or is reporting the SMART status to macOS which macOS is interpreting as a failure. I've never encountered this with Catalina, but we have only used a couple brands & models of third party replacement drives.

[Edited by Moderator]

Jonathan Cohler wrote:

Then why have I seen MANY answers from APPLE on this forum?

Those are Community Specialists (likely forum moderators) who will respond to posts when no one responds after several days or when they believe there may be a safety issue involved. However, even then, they tend to generally post links to general Apple articles & procedures and rarely dig deeper into the issue as they will then suggest contacting Apple support directly by using the "Get Support" link at the top right of this page. Many of the Community Support Specialists don't seem to grasp the deeper aspects of some people's posts because they don't always have real world experience with the products or software (I have seen a few that do appear to have a better technical background & understanding, but it is rare to see here and I mean no insult to any Community Specialists as they can only do as much as Apple has trained them).