SMARTReporter - 2.4.6

Every other version or so I download and try out this app again because I want it to be good and useful. Just about every time I run into a problem that makes me delete it rather quickly. This time (on my 10.6.1 2.4 GHz MacBook) it's the inability to change the disk checking interval in the Preferences (in the field just above the statement "Double click the current checking-interval of a disk to enter a new one)." I can't remember what the defect was last time.

But even if there weren't some malfunction or other such problem in all the versions of this app that I've tried, I can't help but think that this technology is a bit pointless. I have used it ever since it debuted, but it has never given me any indication that the 4 drives that have died on me in that time was about to kick it. In fact, aside from the very, very few people witnessing to that effect both here and in MacUpdate.com's SMARTReporter page, nobody I know has ever been forewarned by this app or any other SMART drive notification app (such as that included in DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro, and many, many others for both Mac and Windows). Except for those very few people mentioned, every disk failure I know of has been sudden and catastrophic, not slow and incremental as it would have to be for this technology to work with enough frequency to make it worthwhile. It's sad, but I am now convinced of the truth of it.

Let the fusillade of disagreement commence.

The Google study is very interesting, but this app has saved several of my clients from much distress. Yes, Apple's Disk Utility monitors the same SMART parameters, but the value of this app is in the notification warnings, both as on-screen pop-up boxes, and the ability to Email 3rd parties that a potential problem may be about to occur. When I got the Email notice about the SMART failure, I notified my client of the situation and they verified it in Disk Utility. The Apple Store had no qualms about replacing the drive since the computer was still under AppleCare.
A very useful application!
Thanks!!

In the majority of cases involving drive failures, relying on a drive's S.M.A.R.T. status is merely a "feel good" measure which is unreliable at best.

Note, the freeware SMARTReporter is not to be confused with shareware like the $25 SMART Utility which claims to have an additional pre-fail algorithm built in to the app; however, I suspect that's tantamount to throwing good money down a rat hole since the Google analysis of over 100,000 drives reported "...models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures" and "...it is unlikely that SMART data alone can be effectively used to build models that predict failures of individual drives."

If it were possible to effectively predict drive failures, the vast resources of the Google corporation R&D arm would have figured it out by now. Considering the thousands of drives used in their servers worldwide, it would certainly be in their best interests to do so.

http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Work at Google on over 100,000 drives has shown little overall predictive value of S.M.A.R.T. status as a whole, but suggests that certain sub-categories of information which some S.M.A.R.T. implementations track do correlate with actual failure rates – specifically, in the 60 days following the first scan error on a drive, the drive is, on average, 39 times more likely to fail than it would have been had no such error occurred. Also, first errors in reallocations, offline reallocations and probational counts are strongly correlated to higher probabilities of failure.

Been running SmartReporter for quite a while now on all 4 of our Macs. Yesterday the HD in my iMac died after "acting funny" all week. Smart Reporter indicated nothing was wrong! Doesn't work very well now does it?!

I was installing Smart Reporter while playing David's Backgammon and I got a message in 4 languages telling me I had to restart my computer and I could do so by either pressing the start button or the usual method. I could not move my cursor. The computer was completely frozen so I had to use the start button to shut it down. I'm not happy about that! Apps usually give you a warning that you'll have to restart your computer and then give you the option to restart now or later. My MacBook Pro with OS 10.5.6 and 2 MB RAM just froze. There was no indication as to why I had to restart. Any ideas as to why this happened?