Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Health of HDD: How to check?

Hey guys, I just wanted to know if it was possible to check on the health of my Mac Mini's HDD. I just want to know if it's about to fail or not.


Thanks!

Posted on Mar 3, 2014 6:02 AM

Reply
6 replies

Mar 3, 2014 6:13 AM in response to NewbMacUser

Boot OS X Recovery and use Disk Utility.


"About to fail" is sort of like "about to run out of gas". Hard disks will all fail, eventually. Could be today or ten years from now. Sometimes they will show symptoms of impending doom, sometimes they fail completely and catastropically with no warning whatsoever.


Having a backup seems to preclude the need to ever use it. If you don't have a backup, do it now, and verify that it is a viable recovery strategy in preparation for the day your Mini won't boot.

Apr 1, 2014 7:19 AM in response to NewbMacUser

S.M.A.R.T. is technology that 'watches' your drive and through the use of statistical data and the drive's behavior is supposed to warn you of the imminent failure of the drive. A Google research project was published about two years ago that showed two things: 1) when your drive warns of a S.M.A.R.T. failure you shouldn't ignore it. False positives are very rare. 2) false negatives are a major problem. Google's research showed that more drives failed without S.M.A.R.T. notification than failed after one.


So at this time there's really no reliable way to check the health of your drive except 1) periodically run a disk utility to verify the health of the drive's directory and 2) keep at least 1 up to date backup for when the drive fails.

Health of HDD: How to check?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.