- External Hard Drive For Mac
- Best Hard Drive Cloning Software For Mac
- Best Hard Disk Recovery Software For Mac
- Best Hard Drive Utility For Mac
- Hard Disk Tool For Windows
SSDs are gradually intruding into the HDD market and replacing the role of regular hard disks in laptops and high-end desktops. Solid State Devices are offering high performance compared to traditional spinning hard disks. This flash-based memory device is consuming less battery power to read and write data with relatively high-speed that guarantee more battery life for your laptops.
The SSD system will boot will be ready to start work in seconds. If you have apps installed on SSD, the drive loads your apps faster and copies Gigabytes of data within a few seconds. SSDs are offering high performance, high-speed and less power consumption. Since this is a new technology, still SSDs are lagging behind hard disks in terms of lifespan and reliability.
- Disk Doctor is another app in ‘the best Mac cleaning software’ list. Once Disk Doctor has scanned the disk, it separately mentions its usage in numbers. Along with this, it also lets you recover storage space in a few clicks.
- The fact that Recuva is on the top of the best data recovery software list, may not come as a surprise to the most of you. This data recovery tool has the ability to restore files from hard drives.
We think it is user-friendly to help you manage all the files on your hard disk using a visual map, so we added the Disk Map feature into Dr. Cleaner for free. However, no functions like this can be found in CleanMyMac. Here, the best hard drive recovery software for 2017 and 2018 can recover all lost files from both internal and external hard disk drive (HDD), like Seagate, Samsung, Sandisk, Toshiba, etc.
Here is the list of best Windows and Mac Free Tools to Check SSD Health and Monitor Performance.
Crystal Disk Info
Crystal Disk Info helps you to monitor Solid State Hard Disk’s health status and temperature. You can use this tool to check your SSD and other Hard Disk types. Once you have installed this tool, this tool can monitor your system hard disk performance in real-time while you working on the system.
This tool can check your disk’s Read and Write speed and S.M.A.R.T. In addition to this, this open source SSD tool can project a lot of information about your SSD. This software can show you the error rates of the disk including “read error rate”. The performance measuring scales like seek time performance, throughput performance, etc. can be viewed in real-time with total Power-on time.
Key Features:
- SSD Details (Firmware, Supported Features, Power On Hours, etc.)
- S.M.A.R.T. Information (Read Error Rate, Seek Time Performance, Power Cycle Count, etc.)
- Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM)/APM Control.
- Alert Mail and Alarm Options.
- Support most of the SSD Drives
Download for: Windows | Free
Read: Best External SSD for Mac, Windows and Android Device.
Smartmonotools
The Smartmontools package contains two utility programs (smartctl and smartd) to control and monitor your hard disk. This tool is offering the real-time monitoring of your Hard Disk. Smartmonotools can analyze and warn you about potential disk degradation and failure.
Smartmontools supports ATA/ATAPI/SATA-3 to -8 disks and SCSI disks and tape devices. This disk tool can run on Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OS/2, Cygwin, QNX, eComStation, Windows and runs from a Live CD.
Key Features:
- Real-time SSD performance monitoring
- Disk failure and degradation alert
- Supports all PC platforms
- Support most of the SSD Drives
Download for: Windows | Mac | Linux | Live CD | Free
Related: 10 Best PC Benchmark Software for Windows
Hard Disk Sentinel
HDSentinel is a hard disk monitoring software that supports Windows, Linux and Dos. This SSD monitoring tool is built to find, test, diagnose and repair SSD problems. Disk Sentinel is also capable to display SSD health. Whether it is an internal or external SSD connected with USB or e-SATA, this tool can scan and recognize your SSD problems and generate reports with the possible fix to solve the errors.
After you install Hard Disk Sentinel, the tool runs in the background and check the SSD health status and warns the user if found any error. This SSD Monitoring tool can measure the disk transfer speed in real time which can be used as a benchmark or to detect possible hard disk failures, performance degradations.
Key Features:
- Test and diagnosis of SSD errors.
- General error reports
- Run in the background in real-time
- Benchmark tool to alert performance degradations.
- Support most of the SSD Drives
Download the free version: Windows | Linux | DOS | Free
Download Premium Version: Standard | Professional | Professional Family | 30% Off Link | Paid
Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox
The Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox is drive management software that allows you to monitor your drive health, estimated drive life remaining and S.M.A.R.T. Attributes. This SSD Toolbox can run quick and full diagnostic scans to test the read and write functionality of an Intel SSD.
This tool can optimize the performance of an Intel SSD using Trim functionality and update the firmware on a supported Intel SSD. You can check and tune your system settings for optimal Intel SSD performance, power efficiency, and endurance. This tool supports a Secure Erase of your secondary Intel SSD. If you are looking for a new SSD, here is a couple of SSDs from Amazon that seems like best sellers.
Key Features:
- Monitor Drive health.
- Estimate SSD drive life.
- S.M.A.R.T. attributes even for non-intel drives.
- Trim functionality
- Performance boost feature.
- Most features are available for Intel SSD Drives
Download for: Windows | Mac | Linux | Free
Crystal Disk Mark
If you need a real benchmarking tool to test your hard disk, Crystal Disk Mark is the right tool. This tool can test your Hard Disk in Sequential Reads/Writes, Random Reads/Writes and QD32 Modes.
If you want to compare your SSD performance, Read/Write speed in random and sequential with other manufacturers, or want to confirm your SSD is offering the same performance manufacturer specified, this is going to be the best open source tool to check the disk or multiple disks based on their read-write performance.
Key Features:
- SSD Details (Firmware, Supported Features, Power On Hours, etc.)
- SSD benchmarking and monitor performance.
- Compare SSD performance with standard data.
Download for: Windows | Free
Samsung Magician
Samsung Magician software features simple, graphical indicators show SSD health status and Total Bytes Written (TBW) at a glance. You can decide SATA and AHCI compatibility and status. The updated Benchmarking feature lets users test and SSDs to compare performance and speed. This tool can use to optimize your Samsung SSD with three different profiles like Maximum Performance, Maximum Capacity, and Maximum Reliability along with detailed descriptions of each OS setting.
Samsung Magician tools let you check the sequential and random read/write speeds. This tool helps to optimize SSD, make sure your system is running always fast and up to the benchmark. The additional option can check TBW (Total Bytes Written), to assess the overall health and estimated remaining lifespan of your SSD. The system Compatibility Check to make sure no conflict with the SSD. The system and Secure Erase allows to wipe out the SSD securely to avoid and sensitive data loss. If you are a Mac user, you are out of luck with this tool, Samsung magic is available only for Windows.
Key Features:
- SSD Details (Firmware, Serial Number, Power On Hours, etc.)
- S.M.A.R.T. Information
- Log temperature
- SSD drive lifetime check.
- Health monitoring
- Disk Error Information Check
- Most features are available for Samsung SSD Drives
Download for: Windows | Linux | Free
Crucial Storage Executive
Crucial SSD tool is a free SSD software to optimize the SSD performance. It can automatically update curial SSD firmware, perform an SSD health check and tweak for the best performanc.e. If you are worried about the security of your data, you can directly set or reset disk encryption password from Crucial SSD Software dashboard. Crucial offer the Momentum Cache feature the SSD operations unto 10 times faster. The software support only Windows at this moment.
Key Features:
- Firmware update.
- Monitor SSD’s operating temperature.
- Real-time monitoring of SSD health.
- Features support for Crucial SSD Drives.
Download for: Windows | Free
Toshiba SSD Utility
SSD Utility is for Toshiba Drives, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based tool for managing OCZ SSDs. The dashboard provides a real-time overview of system status, capacity, interface, health, etc.
In addition to this real-time overview, the tool keeps update SSD firmware. Toshiba Utility can show you how much life left in the SSD, and correct the modes to achieve the best performance of SSD. The SSD tuner lets you tune the SSD for long-term life. The Toshiba SSD utility let you find out if your SSD is hooked up to the suitable ports. This SSD Utility can set in the correct modes to achieve high performance.
Key Features:
- Real-time overviews of the system status
- SSD health information
- The life expectancy of SSD
- Tweak for high performance
- OS Tuner to chose SSD operate-mode
- Most features are available for Toshiba SSD Drives
Download for: Windows | Mac | Free
Kingston SSD Manager
Kingston SSD manager is designed for Kingston SSD users to monitor the performance and health status. The software can be used to update the SSD firmware, disk usage check, disk over provision, etc. The Kingston software can securely erase all data from the SSSD without any trace to score all your information. The software support only Windows.
Key Features:
- SSD Drive details (Model name, firmware version, etc.)
- Monitor drive health in real-time.
- Disk usage log.
- View and export SSD health report.
- Designed for Kingston SSD.
Download for: Windows | Free
SSD Life
SSD Life is a dedicated tool for Solid State Drives. This tool can measure your SSD’s lifespan. You can back up your data before your SSD take its last breath. This is the best tool to install on your computer and monitor SSD’s health. SSD Life can display the disk data in real-time to inform you about any critical defects. SSDLife is checked with most of the SSD drives to check compatibility. This SSD tool can work with most SSD manufacturers such as Kingston, OCZ, Apple MacBook Air built-in SSD.
Key Features:
- Drive details (Trim support, Firmware, etc.)
- SSD health status
- Lifetime calculation of SSD
- Support most of the SSD Drives
External Hard Drive For Mac
Download for: Windows (free trial)
SsdReady
Do you ever wonder how long your SSD is going to last? This is a tool you must have to install on your computer and let it run in the background. This tool track daily Writes and the total usage of your SSD on a daily basis. SSDReady tool can predict how long your SSD going to live. This will give you enough time to prepare and shop around for next SSD. In addition to this, this Solid Disk tool can feedback you what to optimize if it finds too many disks writes, to extend your SSD life.
Key Features:
- Drive details (Trim support, Firmware, etc.)
- Predict lifetime of SSD
- Support most of the SSD Drives
Download for: Windows
SSDs are more fragile than HDs when you compare the lifespan. However, these tools let you check the performance and lifespan of the drive. For Mac users, there are not many tools available to maintain and check performance for SSD. Most of the tools are build for Windows users. However, we listed the best SSD Tools for Mac to Maintain SSD Drive.
There are several tools available to Tweak SSD or enable TRIM on SSD to improve performance. These tools are recommended to use if you see any performance issue while working on your system with SSD. There are SSDTweker and TRIM Enabler to try on your SSD for performance improvement and we provided the list of tools on Tools to Tweak SSD article.
Once you made up your mind to buy SSD, please see our recommended list of SSDs for Mac, if you own a Windows system, please refer the list for best Solid State Drives for Windows. It is always better to keep an eye on your SSD. Install at least one SSD health monitoring tool for your laptop. To be safe, keep a backup disc for the entire system. Backup up your computer once in a month or a week based on your computer use.
My MacBook Pro (described below) fell 5 feet while it was powered on. Would the sudden motion sensor be able to turn off the hard drives in time? Also, can anyone recommend the best (free) hard drive diagnostic tools Mac OS X?
Thanks, Chirag
hairboat♦4 Answers
I assume you are aware of the Shareware tools (Like the five mentioned in this article).
In any case, since you want the free option, you will have to rely in your common sense and the tools you have (this is also true for the Shareware options, which really don’t seem to add much at this stage). Most of the benefit of TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior is to have am emergency plan in place in case of hard drive failure. But that is to be done before the problem :)
Back to your case, I suggest you give Onyx a try to check the status of your HDD’s Smart status. Assuming you don’t hear strange noises in the drive, performing a full Clone to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner would provide you with an important piece of information: the computer can read your entire drive, block by block.
Both Onyx and OS X can verify your volume so I suggest you also perform a verify (using Disk Utility for example) and verify your permissions.
Finally, use AppleJack to execute some of the above tests to make sure that the OS is in Single User.
If after performing all of the above, you see nothing “out of the ordinary”, you don’t hear “strange click noises” or you don’t detect any strange slowness in your drive, you can assume that the drive has not suffered any damage.
But, all things said, I’d keep my backups up2date just in case. (You do have backups, don’t you?)
I’ve had drives fall from a desktop to the floor and survive for years without any problems, and some drives tipped 0.5 inches and instantly died. Hard drives are like unicorns. :)
oa-About the only 'free' tool that's worth anything is smartmontools, IMHO.
smartmontools is a free SMART monitoring application that comes from the Unix, BSD, and Linux world (OS X is based on BSD). This tool can provide extensive SMART monitoring but it's command line which a lot of people don't like. Everything else costs money - I suppose some people have actual costs, like food, water, heat, mortgage, etc. etc.
ZVH, over on MacRumors, has written a list of drive testing tools but beware most of these cost money:
Best Hard Drive Cloning Software For Mac
Mac hard drive test software - creating the definitive list
- Disk Utility, diskutil (FREE, comes with OS)
- Smartmon Tools (FREE, Open Source)
- SMARTReporter ($4.95 for commercial version, but an older version is FREE)
- Scannerz Lite ($21.95)
- Scannerz with Phoenix and FSE-Lite ($39.95)
- Disk Tools Pro ($79.99)
- Disk Warrior ($99.00)
- Drive Genius ($99.00)
- TechTool Pro ($99.99)
That's actually a really good report. Interesting that nearly no one commented on it. In any case, I think you get what you pay for. Tools like Disk Warrior and Scannerz are known to do very limited things but do an extraordinarily good job of doing it, while other 'Swiss Army Knife' tools apparently do a decent job, but not really all that thorough. The author only identifies a few applications as 'free.'
Although I find SMART status useful, I wouldn't base my life around SMART reports and would recommend that people do web searches about the reliability of SMART testing before using it as a defacto standard.
Graham Miln
If you haven't already, you should pop open Disk Utility, select your drive, and click the Info button. Ensure that the SMART status is 'Verified'.
Of course if you hear any audible clicking or anything of the sort, then you'll likely want to order a new HDD now (then again, I figure you haven't heard any clicking, and are wanting to check the health of the drive to ensure it is okay).
Best Hard Disk Recovery Software For Mac
Sounds like your best recourse would be to pull the hard drive and test it in a Windows Machine, or dual-boot Windows on your Mac. Software that's actually useful, like Seatools, which does far more than Smart Monitoring, and is far better than the sub-standard disk utility built into Mac.