SMART Reporter

Hi,

SMART Reporter is a little application that puts an icon in your menu bar and gives your an early warning of impending hard drive failure. I'd recommend that everyone use it.

I recently had a 1.5ghz PowerBook which was stalling at the grey screen with the Apple logo on during startup. I tried TechTool Pro, Mac Test Pro, Disc Utility and Apple Hardware Test, but couldn't get the machine to boot any further. I then did an 'Archive and install' of 10.4.6, whereupon the PowerBook booted up fine. A-ha! I thought, sorted. I left the machine on test for a couple of days, during which there seemed to be no problem. Finally, just before I contacted the owner, I installed SMART Reporter, and within minutes, it was reporting imminent hard drive failure. A little later, the machine was stalling at startup again.

Luckily, reinstalling the OS gave me the opportunity to recover data before the drive failled again, but this might not always be possible. SMART Reporter might just give you enough warning ...

Download SMART Reporter here: http://homepage.mac.com/julianmayer/smartreporter/

Cheers,

Kev.