And beyond the clarity of its reporting, DriveScope displays critical info that Drive Dx doesn't - more likely can't - reach.
CONCLUSION: If you're going to spend money on a S.M.A.R.T. monitor, DriveScope is your only REAL option, but whether it's worth $50 or even $30...?
Actually the critical information DOES appear in DriveDX but the report requires closer reading or there is a risk that it could be overlooked or misinterpreted.
As to the
VALUE of DriveScope I look at it this way. Over the years you, me, and a lot of others bought have purchased one or mire of the three "industrial Strength" volume repair tools for roughly $100 and have spent $30 to $50 or more every year or so since keeping it up to date. And every year we have used them less and less as MacOS has become more and more stable. With the advent of SSDs and APFS those tools have become more and more limited in what they can do and some things we have depended upon them for such as disk and file optimization/defragmentation have become counter productive and pointless. But the question of drive health still remains, particularly anticipating impending drive failure and that is the domain of SMART. But Disk Utility's pass/fail report provides NO WAY to
anticipate future failure and given the manufacturer's tendency to be over-optimistic in setting the SMART attribute limits further analysis is needed.
DriveDX, DriveScope, and TechTool Pro provide the information needed for analysis to anticipate that failure. TechTool Pro provides the essential data in what I find to be a highly readable and comprehendible format along with a host of hardware testing tools and HFS+ HD volume repair utilities, DriveDX provides all of the data in text form but not in as obvious a format, Drive Scope provides all the data in what I find to be an easily apprehendable format.
- Would I pay $100 for TechTool Pro again — probably not. It is still a powerful utility but the simple fact is I don't have much, if any, call for its services lately. However, since I already have TTP I will keep it and buy updates if for no other reason than it does a decent job reporting SMART.
- would I buy DriveDX? I might if there were no other better options, but there are IMO better options
- Would I pay $50 for Drive Scope? I might, if I anticipated future updates were free and upgrades reasonably priced but as you said, that is a high price for a one trick pony. I initially got Drive Scope as a beta tester and it was little better than TTP, the new version however is a substantial step up and I didn't have much hesitation coughing up the $30 upgrade price.
- If I had to choose between TTP and Drive Scope it would be a tough decision. I used to feel TTP's eDrive and later their ProToGo drives alone were sufficient incentive to buy the product, but Apple's Recovery Drive/Recovery Assistant has pretty well rendered those TTP utilities non-essential. At this point I would probably go with Drive Scope as having the best value long term. That could easily change if TTP gained more APFS functionality.
