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Your rating: Now say why...
SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard disk drive. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology built into most modern hard disk drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending hard disk drive problems. SMARTReporter can notify you of impending hard disk drive failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application. The current status of your hard disk drives is always
What's New
Version 2.7.1:
- Added: compatibility with Growl version 1.3
- Added: compatibility with Xserve / SAS hardware
- Added: 5 new icon-sets (thanks to Pietro Faraone)
- Added: placeholder replacement for notification e-mail header
- Updated: Swedish localization (thanks to Pär Boberg)
- Updated: Japanese localization (thanks to Jumpei Suzuki)
Version 2.7.1:
- Added: compatibility with Growl version 1.3
- Added: compatibility with Xserve / SAS hardware
- Added: 5 new icon-sets (thanks to Pietro Faraone)
- Added: placeholder replacement for notification e-mail header
- Updated: Swedish localization (thanks to Pär more...
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later
SMARTReporter User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
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SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen! It does so by periodically polling the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard disk drive. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology built into most modern hard disk drives that acts as an "early warning system" for pending hard disk drive problems. SMARTReporter can notify you of impending hard disk drive failures by sending e-mails, displaying a warning dialog or executing an application. The current status of your hard disk drives is always displayed through the customizable menu item. Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA, SATA or eSATA hard disk drives, if you want S.M.A.R.T. support for your FireWire hard disk drive, send feedback to Apple. Please note that a S.M.A.R.T. alert doesn't mean that your HDD will completely fail for sure, nor can S.M.A.R.T. catch all possible HDD errors - it's just a very valuable indicator.
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Elvey reviewed on 17 Dec 2011
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Bigboysdad reviewed on 16 Apr 2011
1) For all your efforts in maintaining a Hard Disk, it's dying from the moment you purchase your Mac. When its eventually going to go, it will go and you will not stop that happening whatever disk recovery/ maintenance app you use.
2) The best form of data protection is to regularly back up. Do not rely on SmartDisk or any other similar app to save your data. Regular, preferably hourly backup will save the vast majority of your data.
3) If you're aware of impending Hard Drive failure, just backup again if you can (which won't take too long because the last backup was done recently, right?)
4) It is impossible to tell exactly when a Hard Drive will fail. However, with SmartReporter, the chances of getting a warning of a failing drive are improved, especially as it will email you if it identifies something to worry about.
There are other paid-for apps that do a similar, or some would say better job than Smart Reporter. But whatever app you go with, its not much use without consideration of points 1 to 4 above. In this respect, I'm happy to have Smart Reporter installed, in conjunction with my use of AppleJack, Onyx and Diskwarrior to maintain my drive for as long as possible before it inevitably dies. Smart Reporter sits in the menu bar ready to warn me when my Disk's about to die. Its Menu Bar presence also serves as a regular reminder to backup but if my Drive did die, touch wood, I would have lost at most an hour's worth of data.
Its in the context above that this and similar apps should be used. You can pay for this kind of app if you want to, but with Smart Reporter you don't have to as its free. Thank you developer.
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Penguirl reviewed on 14 Apr 2011
http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/faq.html#IOERROR
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Hendricx reviewed on 17 Mar 2011
With this tool I could pinpoint the issue.
Easy to work with and handy when needed.
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"When needed" is "all of the time." What if your hard drive never exhibited any 'strange behavior' and suddenly you heard a horrible screeching sound followed by it becoming inaccessible? Because that's how hard drives sometimes fail. The SMART system will often give tell-tale indicators in advance, even when there's no obvious outwards symptoms that the user notices.
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Poikkeus reviewed on 03 Jan 2011
Your very first defense against drive failure is to back up your data regularly; of course, the more heat your system endures, the more chance of drive failure.
This software is easy to use, one of the several things you should be doing to safeguard your HD.
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SMARTReporter is an application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen!
The word is CAN, not WILL/SHALL/DEFINITELY.
The program is designed to look at the smart status as presented by the firmware and os, not predict what will happen.
I repeat my advice, contact WD.
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Other times, drives fail catastrophically without any indication that something is about to go wrong. I don't think it's reasonable to expect ANYTHING to warn you of that kind of failure. That kind of failure is why we have Time Machine.
As for the requisite car analogy, I think the check engine light is a better analogy. It comes on when it thinks something is wrong. That something wrong might be as minor as a one-time misfire, or it might be as major as a thrown rod. It tells you something isn't right, and sometimes it can save you major trouble by detecting things that aren't quite right, but Nostradamus it's not.
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You should liken it to the oil light of the car, it cannot predict when the oil will disappear because the maker or mechanic put in a faulty sump plug.
I also had a WD disk failure (actually the board, so I swopped it for another and recovered the data), so perhaps you should be addressing your concerns to WD?
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And regarding your car analogy, the oil light doesn't claim to predict failure as SmartReporter does. It gives warning when the oil level gets low. Now suppose you drive a car with little or no oil and the oil light never goes on. That is the fault of the oil light manufacturer/installer.
But I have a better analogy. You have a car with airbags which claim to protect the driver by inflating. Now suppose you do have a front-end collision and the bags don't inflate so you the driver go through the windshield. If the airbags are deemed faulty then the manufacturer is liable.
SmartReporter failed to report that my drive was going bad and still reported it was good after it had already died. It fails to do what it claims and doesn't work, period.
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I don't know if you were referring to Strob with that snarky comment but if you were, suggest reading the Google Disk Failures report:
labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
Strob is more right than you give credit for.
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In any event, I am not sure why you think the Google paper you cite makes your friend Strob seem more intelligent. The paper is a study of drive failure. One conclusion of the paper is that certain SMART parameters correlate highly with drive failure, but that models that rely on SMART parameters alone will not predict about half of drive failures.
The program does not promise to predict all drive failures. It uses SMART parameters and it also has the option for I/O error checking that when used in conjunction with the SMART data improves the program's ability to predict drive failure.
But, no program is going to predict all drive failures. And if you or Strob were expecting something like that, then you were sadly mistaken. All drives eventually fail. Your best solution is to back up your data regularly. This program simply gives you some advance notice for certain kinds of failures--nothing more, nothing less.
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The most common issue I get a Mac brought in with is "I think it has a virus", after a couple of quick checks has always been a failing hard drive or bad ram (so far at least) causing unusual behaviour.
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Strob reviewed on 19 Sep 2010
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Have you tried checking the drives SMART status with another program, like Onyx? If you get the same status with another app, then the problem is not SMARTReporter.
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Where was there a claim that this app would accurately predict 100% of all hard drive failures prior to them happening? And just what would it use to do this? Would it have a driver that ran six months in the future and sent back information through some time portal?
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Thanks
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please always send problem reports to me by email (too) since i don't usually monitor various sites (like macupdate) for problem reports.
SMARTReporter's frequent accessing the computer for current SMART status causes frequent bright white flashes during DVD playback.
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Earlier SMARTReporter was okay with earlier Mac Software.
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Stephen_Fry rated on 08 Dec 2011
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Maudlin rated on 07 Dec 2011
upsdog rated on 07 Dec 2011
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Oleksii rated on 07 Dec 2011
Eggi_from_Hamburg rated on 25 Oct 2011
aem rated on 21 Sep 2011
Tiukov rated on 29 Mar 2011
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endr23 rated on 15 Mar 2011
chewett rated on 24 Jan 2011