On Aug 21, 2014, at 3:48 PM, Bruce Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Aug 21, 2014, at 11:08 AM, jentypo <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Greetings, G-Book members: >> >> I have a toughie that's taking me time to figure out. I use an Aluminum >> PowerBook G4--have for several years, and I work it very hard. I've had >> internal hard drives wear out due to bad sectors being re-assigned, and I >> can verify that the drive is "FAILING" using the SMART Utility. However, is >> there any way to verify the SMART status of a drive without taking apart the >> PowerBook, literally installing the drive and booting from that computer? >> That seems to be the only way to make an "UNSUPPORTED" check. > > > The issue is that SMART status reporting is managed at the lower SATA or IDE > hardware interface level, and connecting via external means (such as firewire > or USB) is not supported under OS X. > > There are open source drivers that will allows things like smartmontools > <http://www.smartmontools.org/> to access some (not all) external interfaces, > <https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver> , getting all this running > on a G4 powerbook would require a fair bit of work, I think. > > Here, for example, is the process to get smartmontools set up under os x > 10.9: <http://mulita.com/blog/?p=7200> > > In theory, if you have the Developer tools installed, you may be able to get > this installed under 10.5 or 10.4, at which point you would be able to get > the info you want. You may have to back down to older versions or work > through a lot of changes in the makefile and figuring out how to back port > stuff to older libraries. > > In general though, the only real solution for failing hard drives is > surprise, and a fanatical devotion to backing up your data. > > The TWO real solutions are surprise, a fanatical devotion to backing up your > data and regularly testing your backups. > > The THREE real solutions are ...:-) > > (No one expect the Drive Failure Inquisition!) > What Bruce said, plus these thoughts: -- The free utility SmartReporter is something I install on every Mac that passes through my hands. Many times, I've had people call and say the little green icon in the menubar turned yellow or red. I tell them their drive is failing and to backup their data immediately and get a new hard drive. Sometimes the drives fail almost immediately, sometimes they linger for a while. But SMARTReporter has been right every time in alerting to an impending drive failure. -- I find the shareware or donationware SMART Utility somewhat unnecessarily alarming. It often will tell me a drive is failing when Drive Genius 3 says the drive is perfectly fine after I run a scan and integrity series of read/write tests. At the same time, SMARTReporter stays green and says the drive is fine. In short, SMART Utility is only one of the tools I use, and it is not the most trusted tool at that. Grammatical errors in a supposedly precision monitoring tool application always unsettle me. On the other hand, SMART Utility does tell me how many hours a drive has run, which is about its only feature I value and trust. -- It's not too difficult to open up a PowerBook G4, compared to, say, an iBook in order to access the hard drive. So since you seem to go through drives rather quickly, might I suggest you get a pile of drives, open up the PowerBook and test them one by one to eliminate the losers and hopefully identify the losers. Of course, that means installing or trying to install an OS on each drive so you can install SMART Utility and run it. But what a bother! That's why I use Newer Technology's universal USB 2.0 drive adapter to connect an ATA/IDE drive to a newer Mac with USB 2.0 ports so I can run Drive Genius 3 on a bunch of drives to find the bad boys before doing a caesarean on a G3 or G4 laptop. Never mind the SMART attributes, if Drive Genius 3 says a drive has bad sectors or fails read/write tests, that drive goes in the e-waste bin. -- With new ATA/IDE hard drives increasingly difficult to acquire, you would be well advised to get a stack of known-good used ones set aside, if you plan to continue using that PowerBook. In addition, if you're not backing up multiple copies of your important data on separate devices, do it. Unless you like surprises. :^) Jim Scott Eureka, CA -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Books, a group for those using G3 iBooks and PowerBooks (we run a separate list for G4 'Books). The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g-books Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "G-Books" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
