Is there a good tool to test and run diagnostics on external USB [3.0] drives? I'm not getting a lot of information out of disk first aid. I could be wrong but it seems like the check volume, and repair volume buttons are gone in macOS, is that true? Or where are they hidden at now, I don't see them on the drive I'm having trouble with.
MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.3), Retina 15"
I'm not sure if this is possible. I've long heard that S.M.A.R.T. is only for internal drives. The Wikipedia entry for S.M.A.R.T. says "...few external drives connected via USB and Firewire correctly send S.M.A.R.T. data over those interfaces."
I'm not on a Sierra Mac right now but I think Disk First Aid can still repair disk directories, but now you click the First Aid button in the toolbar.
I found this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/
You're right, it seems like my particular USB 3.0 drive doesn't support S.M.A.R.T.
Are there any other tools that can perform more in depth diagnostics on external drives than what is provided in Disk Utility?
Depends what you want. Disk Utility never did that much; mostly just repairing the disk directory. Which is not a lot. Disk Utility never did full scans of hard drives or things like that.
I have used DiskWarrior for many years. It's kind of like a super Disk Utility in that it does what Disk Utility does, but deeper and more reliably. It can recover disks that Disk Utility gives up on. But DiskWarrior also is focused on the disk directory and not much else, and it's expensive. It has a S.M.A.R.T. drive monitoring utility that again is only useful on internal disks, and S.M.A.R.T. doesn't seem to apply to SSDs.
There are other utilities that do more, like sector scans, but I hear that's not so useful with today's hard drives and SSDs. I haven't bothered to buy any of them. I mostly use Disk Utility and DiskWarrior. But the reliability of Mac drives has gone up since Apple implemented journaling, so I don't need to repair disks nearly as often. Drive reliability should go up again after APFS is implemented soom.
As for protecting data on external USB drives, even if the diagnostics of S.M.A.R.T. worked on them they are limited and won't warn against all types of failures. There doesn't seem to be a good way to monitor for imminent failure. In the face of that, the conventional wisdom is that instead of looking for ways to monitor drives for failure in advance, simply understand that any drive might fail at any time, so always maintain a current backup of it. Every drive I have with crucial data on it, internal or external, is backed up to at least one other drive.
Network 23 wrote:
S.M.A.R.T. doesn't seem to apply to SSDs.
It does work but not all of the features of S.M.A.R.T. that work on traditional drives are relevant for SSDs.
Here is an example output of smartctl for a Kingston SSD:
Mac-mini:~ $ sudo /usr/local/sbin/smartctl -a /dev/disk0s2
smartctl 6.5 2016-05-07 r4318 [Darwin 16.4.0 x86_64] (sf-6.5-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: SandForce Driven SSDs
Device Model: KINGSTON SH
Serial Number:
LU WWN Device Id:
Firmware Version: 507KC4
User Capacity: 240,057,409,536 bytes [240 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS, ACS-2 T13/2015-D revision 3
SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Tue Mar 14 08:38:32 2017 EET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 48) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x0021) SCT Status supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 105 105 050 Pre-fail Always - 0/11480663
5 Retired_Block_Count 0x0033 100 100 003 Pre-fail Always - 2
9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 5002h+23m+17.320s
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 4449
171 Program_Fail_Count 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 1
172 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct 0x0030 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 33
177 Wear_Range_Delta 0x0000 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 4
181 Program_Fail_Count 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 1
182 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
189 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0000 038 046 000 Old_age Offline - 38 (Min/Max 13/46)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 038 046 000 Old_age Always - 38 (Min/Max 13/46)
195 ECC_Uncorr_Error_Count 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 0/11480663
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0033 100 100 003 Pre-fail Always - 2
201 Unc_Soft_Read_Err_Rate 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 0/11480663
204 Soft_ECC_Correct_Rate 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 0/11480663
230 Life_Curve_Status 0x0013 100 100 000 Pre-fail Always - 100
231 SSD_Life_Left 0x0013 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
233 SandForce_Internal 0x0000 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 17918
234 SandForce_Internal 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 12027
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 12027
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 8757
SMART Error Log not supported
SMART Self-test Log not supported
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0
Note: revision number not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
Tool to perform S.M.A.R.T. tests on external USB drives?
