Mac Tip 2: Checking the SMART Status

As we all know, hard drives fail. They could fail in 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days, 2 months, 2 years, or 10 years. This is bad because you'll lose all your photos, documents, and applications if you don't have a backup if your hard drives fails or dies. To ensure your data is safe, check the SMART status of your disk regularly.

Checking the SMART Status
First, like when verifying, repairing, and erasing, open Disk Utility (located in /Applications/Utilities/). Select the drive (NOT any partitions of any type) and look at the S.M.A.R.T Status at the bottom of the window. If the S.M.A.R.T Status is Verified, you are good to go.

* Look at the disk name on the left. If the disk name is in red, the drive is failing.
* Look at the S.M.A.R.T Status at the bottom. If the S.M.A.R.T Status is Failing, the drive is failing.
* If you can't partition the disk, but rather see a message that the drive has a hardware problem, the drive is failing.

Should any of these conditions be met, immediately back up your data to another drive (Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper are good choices) then replace the affected hard drive.