Application that checks the internal diagnostics of hard drives
Version: 2.1 Build 2B045SMART Utility is a very useful tool designed to scan the internal hardware diagnostics system of hard drives.
License: Free To Try $25.00
Operating System: Mac OS X
Homepage: www.volitans-software.com
Developed by:
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is a system built into hard drives by their manufacturers to report on various measurements(called attributes) of a hard drive's operation.
The attributes can be used to detect when a hard drive is having mechanical or electrical problems, and can indicate when the hard drive is dying. This allows time to hopefully backup, and then replace the drive.
Each manufacturer implements a different number of attributes, but most implement some common ones. They include temperature and bad sectors (bad areas on the drive).
There are thresholds for each of these attributes, and if the measurement will drop below the threshold, the overall SMART status will automatically indicate failure.
However, some of these attributes, such as bad sectors, can indicated a failing hard drive before the threshold is reached. Unlike Disk Utility, and other drive utilities, which only check the overall SMART status, SMART Utility checks the individual attributes and indicates when a drive is failing.
SMART Utility is based on the command line "smartmontools", an open source software package that does the actual scanning of SMART attributes. SMART Utility only parses the data that smartmontools outputs, and it would not exist without it.