Can Disk Utility get SMART status from external drives?

It is likely you can, depending on your OS and external drive. I am running MacOS Sierra 10.12.4 on a 5K iMac. I have a WD My Book Studio 2TB Firewire 800 external drive attached via FW800 to TB2 adapter. I was able to get SMART to work by installing this software:

https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver

Specifically, "Release 0.8" which is what they recommend to try first:

SATSMARTDriver-0.8.dmg

I have System Integrity Protection disabled, which probably allowed me to smoothly use that DMG to install the software. I don't see that as an issue though, since we Mac users existed without SIP from 1984 to 2015 just fine. You probably can enable SIP after the install, if you want, but I did not test that.

Before I installed, I confirmed that the WD My Book Studio was listed as a compatible external drive:

https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supported_USB-Devices

The instructions on Github say only this:

* Unmount external drives

* Use the dmg image and the installer

* Check DiskUtility. The disks should have "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified"

If you perform only those 3 steps, it won't work. Step-3 is RESTART, and Step-4 should be Check Disk Utility. That worked for me. I was able to see "Verified" in Apple's Disk Utility, and I could then use TechTool Pro 8 to run SMART checks on the external drive! I must say, it's a glorious experience when you finally find a solution that not only works, but works on Apple's latest hardware and OS too.

Best wishes!

Or is it telling me that the new drive doesn't support SMART

DU will gladly tell you IF the drive supports it - and many don't. I've owned a number of external drives and haven't had one yet that will......

Unless otherwise noted by the drive and/or enclosure, you can't get SMART data from a drive connected through USB or FireWire.

(58729)

Most hard drives support S.M.A.R.T.

Problem is, most manufacturers of hard drive enclosures do not port S.M.A.R.T. support through to the computer. In fact I am not aware of any USB or FireWire drives that support it.

If you remove the internal HDD from an external USB or FireWire enclosure and connect it directly to computer's internal SATA bus (only possible on a Mac Pro really) you will likely see that the S.M.A.R.T. reporting works.

The Author of SMARTReporter, which provides SMART information, has this to say in his FAQ:

Q: Why are my FireWire/USB/SCSI based hard disk drives not seen/supported?

A:

"Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drives, if you want S.M.A.R.T. support for your SCSI, FireWire or USB hard disk drive, send feedback to Apple."

All SCSI and some FireWire/USB hard disk drives could work if Apple implemented S.M.A.R.T. checking for SCSI and FireWire in Mac OS X (SCSI pass-through). Note that some drives could never work if their bridge controller doesn't pass support the necessary features.

That's only part of the problem. The other half of the problem is there is no standard for supporting SMART over USB/FW/SCSI. Different manufacturers use different methods.

So, along with sending feedback to Apple, send feedback to all the drive/enclosure/controller manufacturers to accept one standard.

Unfortunately I cannot speak to the NewerTech enclosure, but in principle it appears to be possible to have SMART information displayed even for external drives if the enclosure's bridge controller chip allows it.

My experience:

I've used two MacPower Pleiades FW800/400/USB/eSATA enclosures for several years and I've now supplemented them with two additional inXtron enclosures. They all work as expected daisy-chained to the iMac.

The interesting thing is that the inXtron enclosures came with a CD with some software on it ("Smart AP") which is not available for download, notably a Dashboard Widget for displaying actual and maximum temperatures, total hours of operation, start/stop cycles, drive model and serial number.

This widget is complete garbage, though – it is a nauseating nightmare of extreme over-design at the expense of even basic usability:

http://www.inxtron.com/information-center/smart-ap-for-external-hard-drives

To make matters even worse, it can only display the above information for the first external drive connected.

BUT: This Widget internally calls a command line utility which does the actual parameter retrieval, and that one can be called from the terminal as well.

So after installing the software from CD and effectively discarding the Widget, I checked out the command line utility in the Terminal and found that this utility actually reported data about ALL my enclosures, both the inXtron and the MacPower ones (there seems to be firmware compatibility across these):

(The '$' is supposed to be Terminal's bash prompt – type in only the rest of the respective line.)

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 1

29 50 13 8

53 67 645 15829

52 53 90 7105

51 52 18 13

Each line reports the following for one connected enclosure:

[temp] [maxtemp] [cycles] [hours]

The drives are reported first USB, then FireWire drives, each in the order of first connection / mounting.

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 2

WD-WCA**************

WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0

5TE09***************

ST31000333AS-00MMMB0

5TE09***************

ST31000333AS-00MMMB0

WD-WMA**************

WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0

Each drive gets two lines reported, first the drive's serial number ("***" blocking out my exact ones), then the drive model.

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 3

29 50 13 8

WD-WCA**************

WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0

53 67 645 15829

5TE09***************

ST31000333AS-00MMMB0

52 53 90 7105

5TE09***************

ST31000333AS-00MMMB0

51 52 18 13

WD-WMA**************

WDC WD30EZRS-00J99B0

This combines both of the above.

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 5

disk4

disk1

disk2

disk3

This reports the mounted disk names (referring not to the volume names but to the internal Unix names as in /dev/[drive]); Numbering is in connection / mounting order, the actual sequence is as always USB drives, then FireWire drives.

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 6

USB

1394

1394

1394

This reports the connection interface for each drive in the same sequence as all other commands.

$ /Applications/MacpowerAP/GetSMART 7

MPT934DS1.20.0104.00

MPT934DS1.20.0104.00

This might report the firmware revision or something like that.

These are the commands I know about, and they apply only to the "Smart AP" software supplied with current inXtron enclosures, but it may be possible that other brands use it as well.

I have not been able to identify information about the self-test (early(?) failure warning), but it might be contained as well in the data reported above.

As always, your mileage may vary and you should never do such experiments without FIRST making sure you've got backups of your data and that such backup is not connected during experimentation!

Maybe this can help some people getting the information they need; And maybe there are similar capabilities with other enclosures. At the very least it demonstrates that with the proper firmware in the enclosures themselves and some software on the Mac it IS possible to get at least some of the SMART information from the drive in an external FireWire- or USB-connected enclosure.

None of that is fed into the system's "official" SMART mechanism, though, so no luck using standard mechanisms or applications for it. It's strictly a command-line affair (deservedly disregarding the mishappen Widget).

Good luck!

I tested yesterday SATSMARTDriver-0.5 (Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Lacie D2 FW800 and USB 2.0 external Drive) and works perfect!

I've downloaded and am testing SATSMARTDriver-0.10.dmg. Installing it was straightforward and it's worked successfully so far with two external drives connected via USB 2.0 to my MacBook4,1 running OS X 10.6.8.

1. A WDC WD10EACS-00ZJB0 1TB drive in a Rocketfish AHD-35 enclosure.
2. A TOSHIBA MK5059GSXP 2.5" 500GB drive in its original Canvio enclosure.

Disk Utility and SMART Utility are both reading the SMART data from both these drives.

I'm posting this now so I don't forget, but I'll try to add info later about a couple of other drives that are not presently connected.

I can't seem to edit my previous post, so here's an additional drive I had success with:

3. A TOSHIBA DT01ABA300 3.5" 3TB drive in its original DWC130 enclosure.

thank you for your referral of the SATSMARTDriver. do you know if it works over firewire 800?

i've d/l'ed it and am running it, but it still says s.m.a.r.t. status is not supported. thanks!

ICYBOX TOSHIBA MK2555GSXF Media

FireWire 800

ID: 13576878029122629

IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/PCIB@1E/FRWR@3/node@303c194015ac45/sbp-2@4008

250,06 GB (250 059 350 016 bajtů)

S.M.A.R.T. : Verifed

IB-226StUE2-Wh:

Manufacturer: ICYBOX

Model: 0x15AC45

GUID: 0x303C194015AC45

Maximal speed : up 800 Mb/s

Speed of connection: up 400 Mb/s

IB-226StUE2-Wh Unit:

Version unit: 0x10483

ID unit: 0x609E

Revision Firmware: 0x227

Level of product revision : 2.27

10.6.8 iMac last white

Caveat emptor:
I have 3 FW800 and 2 USB3 drives, so was also very interested in a solution; I tried the SATSMARTDriver kext Isamu Kanashiro found.
It worked for me once after installation, without rebooting, displaying a "verified" SMART status in Disk Utility, but after that the Finder beachballed, and the computer wouldn't reboot: I got the spinning gear symbol for >10min before I gave up (and I have a SSD boot disk, which normally boots in 7sec).

It wouldn't reboot after several power-downs either, all external disks disconnected; I had to resort to booting from a Recovery partition, and uninstalling the driver via Terminal, as per https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver:

rm -r /Volumes/<MyBootVolume>/System/Library/Extensions/SATSMARTDriver.kext

rm -r /Volumes/<MyBootVolume>/System/Library/Extensions/SATSMARTLib.plugin

which immediately resolved the non-booting issue. I then again tried installing the driver with same results.

Machine is a non-retina Mid-2012 MBP 15", running 10.8.5 .

I didn't have time to do any troubleshooting (try older version of the driver, without USB3 hub etc.), so I left it uninstalled for now, but just FYI -- if anyone tries it out, make sure you have another way to reboot your Mac in case this happens to you, so you don't need to reinstall the entire OS.