I have a Mac Studio (2023) running macOS 15.6.1. When I run Drive Genius v6.2.3, it reports problems on my start up drive:
When I run Disk Utility, it says everything is ok.
To run the repair module in Drive Genius, I need to restart from another drive.
Are these serious problems? Should I start from another drive and run the repair module?
[Edited by Moderator]
Original Title: consistency errors
Mac Studio, macOS 15.6
freichorn wrote:
Just tries DriveDX. It seems to report no problems with the drive.
Is it a better option than Drive Genius for monitoring drives?
I believe Drive Genius is getting the same health information from the drives, but may present it differently & even interpret the information differently. I've suggested using DriveDx to get a health report for people's drives because DriveDx is a well designed app which includes lots of information for the user (more than other apps), plus better yet it provides a text report which is easy to post on this forum....and the data within the report is the only app which presents the health attribute table in a manner which is in the same general order as what I'm used to viewing. Other apps re-order the attribute table making it very difficult for me to manually interpret the data. Plus the DriveDx developers actually provide details on their app, especially for the installation & uninstallation of the special third party USB driver needed to access the health information of external drives (this driver may currently be broken on macOS 15.x Sequoia). Now other regular contributors are suggesting the use of DriveDx because they've seen how much it helps me to analyze the health of people's drives.
DriveDx is great at interpreting the health of Hard Drives, but not so great at interpreting the health of SSDs.....actually no apps are able to properly interpret the health of an SSD. The health of an SSD must be manually interpreted from the health information provided by these third party apps because not all errors are fatal and some SSDs can be "reset" which may fix some errors. Many blade style NVMe based SSDs provide very little health information, so it is very difficult to truly assess the health of these NVMe SSDs.
This is the "Show Details" from Disk Utility:
Unless you are having a specific issue with this external drive, then I would just ignore the Drive Genius results. I've never used Drive Genius, except perhaps to demo the product many years ago....I honestly don't recall.
According to the Alsoft developers who make the great Disk Warrior app, Apple only released the necessary information for the APFS file system a couple years ago (I forget which year I saw them first mention this). Alsoft has been working on adding APFS file system scanning & repair for at least two (maybe three) years now, but they have yet to release APFS repair support. It takes lots of time to develop software dealing with a file system and the necessary testing to make sure the repair software is not going to destroy users' data so it doesn't surprise me Alsoft has yet to release an update to their app. I know I would not trust any other third party app to repair an Apple file system....it worked miracles years ago for the HFS+ file system. I haven't had any need to use the app in years for repairing HFS+ file systems.....either Apple finally fixed the macOS bugs with the file system or the system hardware just got better so it did not corrupt the file system as much. While I have had occasion where I would like to repair the APFS file system to make troubleshooting easier, I'm not sure I will use an updated version since my organization now just re-images our systems these days.
I see you are using TechTool Pro (TTP). I had access to TTP years ago and was never impressed by it.....other apps did a much better job. I also had a chance to use TTP a few years ago, and was even more underwhelmed by it. Personally I would save your money on TTP.
It seems you have a USB2 hub connected to your system according to the EtreCheck report with a USB3 device connected to it. That USB3 device will be painfully slow, unless that USB3 device is a USB stick (most USB sticks are painfully slow even if rated for USB3....it does not mean those USB sticks were actually designed to transfer data at a fast speed). I think the "Fresco Logic" device is the source of the problem since the EtreCheck report shows it as a USB2 hub with your OWC miniStack & Mercury Elite Pro Quad connected to it:
From EtreCheck Report:
Fresco Logic, Inc. - USB2.0 Hub
Other World Computing - miniStack STX 96W
OWC - Mercury Elite Pro Quad
freichorn wrote:
Just tries DriveDX. It seems to report no problems with the drive.
Is it a better option than Drive Genius for monitoring drives?
I believe Drive Genius is getting the same health information from the drives, but may present it differently & even interpret the information differently. I've suggested using DriveDx to get a health report for people's drives because DriveDx is a well designed app which includes lots of information for the user (more than other apps), plus better yet it provides a text report which is easy to post on this forum....and the data within the report is the only app which presents the health attribute table in a manner which is in the same general order as what I'm used to viewing. Other apps re-order the attribute table making it very difficult for me to manually interpret the data. Plus the DriveDx developers actually provide details on their app, especially for the installation & uninstallation of the special third party USB driver needed to access the health information of external drives (this driver may currently be broken on macOS 15.x Sequoia). Now other regular contributors are suggesting the use of DriveDx because they've seen how much it helps me to analyze the health of people's drives.
DriveDx is great at interpreting the health of Hard Drives, but not so great at interpreting the health of SSDs.....actually no apps are able to properly interpret the health of an SSD. The health of an SSD must be manually interpreted from the health information provided by these third party apps because not all errors are fatal and some SSDs can be "reset" which may fix some errors. Many blade style NVMe based SSDs provide very little health information, so it is very difficult to truly assess the health of these NVMe SSDs.
This is the "Show Details" from Disk Utility:
Unless you are having a specific issue with this external drive, then I would just ignore the Drive Genius results. I've never used Drive Genius, except perhaps to demo the product many years ago....I honestly don't recall.
According to the Alsoft developers who make the great Disk Warrior app, Apple only released the necessary information for the APFS file system a couple years ago (I forget which year I saw them first mention this). Alsoft has been working on adding APFS file system scanning & repair for at least two (maybe three) years now, but they have yet to release APFS repair support. It takes lots of time to develop software dealing with a file system and the necessary testing to make sure the repair software is not going to destroy users' data so it doesn't surprise me Alsoft has yet to release an update to their app. I know I would not trust any other third party app to repair an Apple file system....it worked miracles years ago for the HFS+ file system. I haven't had any need to use the app in years for repairing HFS+ file systems.....either Apple finally fixed the macOS bugs with the file system or the system hardware just got better so it did not corrupt the file system as much. While I have had occasion where I would like to repair the APFS file system to make troubleshooting easier, I'm not sure I will use an updated version since my organization now just re-images our systems these days.
I see you are using TechTool Pro (TTP). I had access to TTP years ago and was never impressed by it.....other apps did a much better job. I also had a chance to use TTP a few years ago, and was even more underwhelmed by it. Personally I would save your money on TTP.
It seems you have a USB2 hub connected to your system according to the EtreCheck report with a USB3 device connected to it. That USB3 device will be painfully slow, unless that USB3 device is a USB stick (most USB sticks are painfully slow even if rated for USB3....it does not mean those USB sticks were actually designed to transfer data at a fast speed). I think the "Fresco Logic" device is the source of the problem since the EtreCheck report shows it as a USB2 hub with your OWC miniStack & Mercury Elite Pro Quad connected to it:
From EtreCheck Report:
Fresco Logic, Inc. - USB2.0 Hub
Other World Computing - miniStack STX 96W
OWC - Mercury Elite Pro Quad
Drive Genius has not been updated in nearly 3 years and I would not trust those results.
https://service.prosofteng.com/resources/dg/6/cast/4/release_notes.html
https://www.prosofteng.com/drive-genius-mac-protection-software?s
What does DriveDX say about your Mac Studio's startup drive...?
The First Aid summary can lie about the state of the file system check. Click "Show Details" on the First Aid summary screen and look back through the report where I'm sure you will find those inode warnings listed.
freichorn wrote:
Just tried DriveDX. It seems to report no problems with the drive.
Is it a better option than Drive Genius for monitoring drives?
If DriveDX gave the drive a clean bill of health..?
Then that is a good indication that the drive is healthy.
If you are having some other problems..?
Then there is a good chance, that they are third-party software related.
EtreCheckPro is an excellent tool for sorting out third-party software problems.
Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html
Then post back here with your Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community
Please post the whole EtreCheckPro report,
as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community
This is from the EtreCheckPro report:
Major Issues:
Anything that appears on this list needs immediate attention.
Heavy CPU usage - Some processes are using an unusually high amount of CPU.
Minor Issues:
These issues do not need immediate attention but they may indicate future problems or opportunities for improvement.
Heavy RAM usage - Apps are using a large amount of RAM.
Apps crashing - There have been numerous app crashes.
Apps with heavy CPU usage - There have been numerous cases of apps with heavy CPU usage.
Unsigned files - There are unsigned software files installed. These files could be old, incompatible, and cause problems. They should be reviewed.
System modifications - There are a large number of system modifications running in the background.
USB 2.0 hub - You have USB 3.0 drives connected to a USB 2.0 hub.
Kernel extensions present - This computer has kernel extensions that may not work in the future.
Sharing enabled - This computer has sharing services enabled that could be a security risk.
HWTech wrote:
It seems you have a USB2 hub connected to your system according to the EtreCheck report with a USB3 device connected to it. That USB3 device will be painfully slow, unless that USB3 device is a USB stick (most USB sticks are painfully slow even if rated for USB3....it does not mean those USB sticks were actually designed to transfer data at a fast speed). I think the "Fresco Logic" device is the source of the problem since the EtreCheck report shows it as a USB2 hub with your OWC miniStack & Mercury Elite Pro Quad connected to it:
I think that's just a side effect of some attached device. Its seems to be creating separate devices using an Intel chipset for USB3 and Fresco Logic for USB 2.
Except for the PNY drives, all of the external drives are showing USB 3+ speed.
I don't see any problem in the EtreCheck report.
Just tries DriveDX. It seems to report no problems with the drive.
Is it a better option than Drive Genius for monitoring drives?
Should have said "just tried DriveDX."
This is the "Show Details" from Disk Utility:
It seems it found no errors.
Drive Genius and Disk Utility inconsistency on Mac Studio's startup drive
