external ssd health check

With the SAT SMART driver installed, TechTool Pro can check the SMART parameters of many (not all) external drives.

DriveDX also has an option to install this SAT SMART driver to facilitate checking health of external drives.

The manuals for TechTool Pro and for DriveDX explain how to install this driver so external drives can be checked.

With a free system extension installed, I believe that TechTool Pro can read SMART parameters from external drives. Those parameters provide the best information about possible degradation in the drive hardware over time. For instance, error counts and temperature readings rise for a drive that is degrading (SSD or HDD). But drives can fail at any time, so backups are a must.

A utility called DriveDX provides the most information about hardware health of drives (internal or external). Again, some drives will show degradation before failing, others may just fail at once without warning.

I tend to agree with Etresoft. External (and internal) solid state drives are nowadays mass production items that are generally extremely reliable and tend to last a long time.

The Utility you might be looking for is called Lifespan and it is sold by MicroMat, who also sells TechTool Pro and Drivescope.

My approach is to buy drives from reliable suppliers that offer a 5-year warranty (minimum 3 years). I have never had one fail in the warranty period, actually, but might not bother with a warranty claim what with hassle, shipping costs, etc. but I figure if the manufacturer offers a 5-year warranty that product might be more reliable than one with a 1 or 2 or 3 year warranty. Just a theory. I also look at web sites that sell thousands or hundreds of thousands of these products to see how the users rate them, I look for 4.5 stars out of 5 for satisfaction.

These days, one can simply treat these drives like a plug in appliance and simply replace them when they fail. You are always protected if you have one or more backups of anything of value on these drives. If you are more of a tinkerer, you can purchase programs like Lifespan (which is designed to moniter lifetime of SSDs, both internal and external drives) and try to "watch" for signs of trouble, but my experience with drives that fail is that it is usually a sudden event and hard to predict. I do have the original internal SSD in a 2010 MacBook Air that has been showing "yellow" (warning) on some of the temperature related SMART parameters for its SSD, but it has been doing that for more than 3 years now. It also fails the DriveDX extended (long) test but the laptop still seems to work fine. I keep it mainly as a historical item, it's not used for anything important anymore.

So I would suggest just keep backup copies of files on these drives and use the drive, like an appliance, maybe replacing it after 5 years of steady use, although I have such drives in use for considerably longer. My employer replaces all our work computers and drives every 3 years, which is the opposite approach; it means they spend very little on failed devices that need repair. If you like to tinker like we used to in the old days (see Etresoft's comments), you can get Lifespan or some similar product (there are several).

Evo442 wrote:

Tech Tool Pro cant tell me much. most external ssd's don't use SMART technology.

They do, but the USB bus doesn't pass that information.

I recommend you stop wasting your time. Your drives are fine. This isn't 1988 anymore.