Scannerz with Phoenix and FSE-Lite ($39.95).SMARTReporter ($4.95 for commercial version, but an older version is FREE).Disk Utility, diskutil (FREE, comes with OS).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 Everything else costs money - I suppose some people have actual costs, like food, water, heat, mortgage, etc. This tool can provide extensive SMART monitoring but it's command line which a lot of people don't like. Smartmontools is a free SMART monitoring application that comes from the Unix, BSD, and Linux world (OS X is based on BSD). :)Ībout the only 'free' tool that's worth anything is smartmontools, IMHO.

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. 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.īut, all things said, I’d keep my backups up2date just in case. 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.īoth 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.įinally, use AppleJack to execute some of the above tests to make sure that the OS is in Single User. But that is to be done before the problem :)īack to your case, I suggest you give Onyx a try to check the status of your HDD’s Smart status. Most of the benefit of TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior is to have am emergency plan in place in case of hard drive failure. 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). I assume you are aware of the Shareware tools (Like the five mentioned in this article).