

Ask HN:  How to know if hard disk failure is imminent on a Mac? - amichail

I've started getting beeping from my Mac Mini, which apparently means that the hard disk is about to fail.<p>Is there a way to get a rough estimate on how much longer it will last?
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minsight
You can also try running hardware diagnostics from the disk that came with
your mac. That will do a test to see if something is currently broken.

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minsight
Install SmartReporter. It will give SMART diagnostics which can indicate if
(and how quickly) your disk is trending towards mechanical failure.

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amichail
Does the SMART status indicate a problem only temporarily when that problem
happens?

Even though I have heard beeps, SMART doesn't indicate any problem now.

Is it possible to get beeping without SMART indicating a problem?

Is there a SMART status log?

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minsight
There is a SMART log. Let the thing run and any SMART warnings will go there.
It's possible for a disk to fail and not give SMART errors, but running
SMARTreporter gives you more information about the state of a disk and whether
it's behaving in a less-reliable manner. It's possible for a disk to read data
and report it accurately, but require retries to compensate for failing
hardware. SMART will report this sort of thing, when normal disk use will make
it seem that the disk is still behaving as well as it was before.

