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
Hard drive test free download - Hard Drive Test Pilot, Test Drive, Flobo Hard Disk Repair, and many more programs. It’s a good idea to check the hard drive health of a Mac as part of a periodic maintenance routine.Doing this is extremely easy with Disk Utility, and we’ll cover exactly how to verify hard disks, how to repair them, and what to do if you encounter any issues or errors in the process. So I bought a 480GB SSD, an external hard drive docking station, and a torx screwdriver set off Amazon. From my experience with the pre-2014 Mac minis, this would be a relatively painless process.
hairboat♦- GSmartControl – hard disk drive and SSD health inspection tool. GSmartControl is an open source graphical user interface for smartctl, which is a tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives.
- When it comes to diagnosing and resolving problems with their computers, most Mac users rely on Disk Utility and the tools that come with Mac OS X. Disk Utility can resolve a number of problems—such as damaged hard drive directory structures and permissions problems with Mac OS X’s system files.
- The Best Data Recovery Software of 2018. If you have Mac with a traditional hard drive, Disk Drill Pro offers one. Useful hardware and maintenance tools. Effective for traditional hard disk.
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:
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.
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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).
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.
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Hard Drive Inspector Professional monitors your system's hard disks, SSDs, and USB drives, constantly and in real time. It also ties together a lot of useful capabilities like SMART options, performance settings, and alerts, in one easy-to-navigate user interface.
Pros
Centralized management: Hard Drive Inspector Professional does everything its free competitors do, but from one program and interface.
Reliability estimates: Ongoing reliability estimates, temperature monitoring, and immediate alerts help you anticipate and prevent disk failure and data loss.
Acoustic management: Hard Drive Inspector Professional can make noisy drives quieter, though drive performance might suffer slightly. A slider on the Options dialog shifts from slower/quieter to faster/louder operation.
Cons
Freeware alternatives: Hard Drive Inspector Professional isn't expensive, but similarly capable freeware is available, too.
Backups are better: Hard Drive Inspector Professional points out (correctly) that it helps protect your disks from failure and data loss. But by that logic you'd be better off putting the money toward the cost of a top-shelf backup solution.
Bottom Line
Hard Drive Inspector Professional has advantages over similar freeware, especially unbundled tools. If you're not sure whether you need it, you can try it for free. The information it gathers might just convince you that you're better off with it than without it.
Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Hard Drive Inspector Professional 4.30 build 225.