Not quite! Disk Utility's, and other apps that report only the consolidated Pass/Fail are limited to reporting the manufacturer's
smoke & mirrors as you called it. I have no idea what DriveDX reports, but apps such as Micromat's TechTool Pro and Drive scope that report the
ACTUAL attributes and their values provide information that can enable a reasonably informed user to draw their own conclusion.
If I am considering a rotating rust (HD) drive I would look first at…
- 1. Raw Read Error Rate
- 3. Spin Up Time
- 6. Reallocated Sector Count
- 7. Seek error Rate
- 10. Spin Retry Count
as leading indicators of impending failure. A non-zero value for any of these is an early warning sign, and the closer it is to the manufacturer's threshold setting the sooner it will need to be replaced. If it is over the Manufacturer's threshold the drive has failed. Most of the other attributes are indicators of age.
I just checked to see what SMART attributes are reported for an OWC SATA attached SSD and there were NO
pre-fail attributes reported 😡
If I am looking at a NVMe SSD then the leading indicators are:
- Available Spares
- Percentage used
- Percentage Remaining
Once again if any of the maufacturer's thresholds are exceeded, consider the drive not just toast but burnt toast.
NOTE Although both Micromat's TechTool Pro 11 and Drive Scope 1.1.2 report the full set of SMART attributes reported by a drive, in the course of this thread I have come to realize Drive Scope provides some additional information and even a test that IMHO substantially enhances the my ability to analyze what SMART is really telling me:
- SMART logs
- Self Test results
- the ability to trigger both short and long offline self tests
- complete analysis of drive capabilities
- additional information about SMART attributes (pre-fail, old-age)
Given it has been years since I found it necessary to resort to an industrial strength utility for volume repairs, and the limitations of third party apps
vis-a-vis. APFS formatted SSDs I would have to say at this point Drive Scope is the more useful app.
