TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about a S.M.A.R.T. error?

Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about a failed S.M.A.R.T. self-test check?

Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about an I/O-error?

Q: Can SMARTReporter predict every possible disk failure?

Q: Why does SMARTReporter report another S.M.A.R.T. status than Disk Utility?

Q: Why does SMARTReporter report another S.M.A.R.T. status than SMART Utility, TechTool Pro or DriveDX?

Q: What about the polling interval for the S.M.A.R.T. status, doesn't every few hours suffice?

Q: Which disks can SMARTReporter actually check for problems?

Q: Does SMARTReporter support S.M.A.R.T. checking on external disks (USB/FireWire)?

Q: Does SMARTReporter support S.M.A.R.T. checking on disks attached to PCI-ATA-cards?

Q: Why would I need SMARTReporter although S.M.A.R.T. checking is built into Mac OS X?

Q: Will running SMARTReporter prevent my Mac or its disks from going to (idle) sleep?

Q: Why does SMARTReporter claim to check more disks than I actually have?

Q: Does SMARTReporter work with SSDs?

Q: Does SMARTReporter support 'Fusion'-disks?

Q: Why is my SMARTReporter icon yellow?

Q: Why does the "Disk-Space-Check" not match the values seen in the Finder?

Q: How can i make SMARTReporter do things like playing a loud sound when it detects a disk problem?

Q: How can I uninstall SMARTReporter?

Q: I've set SMARTReporter not to display an icon in the Menu or the Dock. How do I get it back?

Q: How reliable are the e-mail problem notification mechanisms?

Q: Does SMARTReporter work when no user is logged-on?

Q: How to change how long SMARTReporter preserved collected data for plotting?

Q: How can I limit the size of the log-file?

Q: Does SMARTReporter work under non-admin accounts?

Q: The S.M.A.R.T. attributes for my disk show 'Pre-fail', is my disk going to fail?

Q: Why does SMARTReporter display only one menu icon although i have multiple HDDs?

Q: Why can't I command-drag the menu icon of SMARTReporter?


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Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about a S.M.A.R.T. error?

A:

1.) Make sure your backup of all valuable data on the disk is complete and up-to-date (do not delay making backups until you get a S.M.A.R.T. alert since disks might fail without predictable signs, there might not be enough time left for a complete backup and there could also be already some data corruption at this point).

2.) Contact Apple, or your disk manufacturers technical support department for instructions. Some disk manufacturers consider a S.M.A.R.T. alert sufficient evidence that the disk is bad, and will immediately issue an RMA for its replacement under warranty.

3.) In any case you should not rely on said disk with critical data anymore.


These are just well-meant suggestions, you are of course free to ignore them.


"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." Please read the section about the reliability of S.M.A.R.T. failure predictions.


If you are an advanced user you can select drive in question in "SMARTReporter->Disk Checks->S.M.A.R.T.->Advanced Tools" and click "Show attributes" to get more information about which attribute is responsible for triggering the alert.


Note that S.M.A.R.T. errors seem to come in two flavors, short transient failures that often do not mean that the disk will certainly fail and longer errors where the status goes to "failing" and doesn't switch back to "O.K." anymore. These long failures these are generally more indicative of imminent disk failures.


Also note that this section applies to a failed ’S.M.A.R.T. summary status’ check. If you had a failure in the ’S.M.A.R.T. self-test check’ please read the next section.


Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about a failed S.M.A.R.T. self-test check?

A:

SMARTReporter’s main function is to perform the S.M.A.R.T. summary status check. If those fail this is usually a sign of serious trouble as explained above.

However, a failed S.M.A.R.T. self-test is usually not as ‘severe’ as a failing summary-status check. It is included because some people like to get warnings about possible disk problems as early as possible even if the disk is still quite O.K. and might not even fail for sure later on. Depending on the specific disk and circumstances a failed check here can be relatively harmless (due to ‘bad blocks’, see next section) or a early sign of more severe problems that are often growing more serious and lead to a failed summary status check and a dying disk later on. It depends - predicting the future seems to be difficult and is always associated with some margin of uncertainty. It also depends very much how the manufacturer of the disk has implemented the self-test. You can ask them how severe the failed self-test is on the disk in question.


How to proceed is, of course, your choice. 

If you want to avoid any possible disk problems (which of course can lead to data loss and long recovery times) you could just replace the disk now before it gets more serious. Depending on the manufacturer, warranty and the details of the error you may also be eligible for a free replacement disk.

If you want to avoid having a lot of work and/or cost replacing a disk that is most likely still quite fine you can just keep it and just monitor the issue whether it grows more serious.


Q: What to do when SMARTReporter informs me about an I/O-Error?

A:

I/O-errors mean that a read or write operation of the hard disk has failed and they can come from a multitude of sources with different levels of problem-severity - unfortunately there is no easy way to know why the I/O-error occurred. The most common cause for I/O-errors are "bad blocks" on your hard disk. When reading a file which has a "bad block", this will result in an I/O-error (as often happens with scratched CDs/DVDs which SMARTReporter doesn't warn about). "Bad blocks" are relatively common and are not a problem when occurring only infrequently because these blocks are automatically remapped to "spare blocks". So if you get very sporadic I/O-errors, this is probably caused by these normal bad blocks, and nothing to worry about. However, if you get I/O-errors very frequently this can either mean that:

• You are often reading from files with bad-blocks, but never writing to them, which would trigger the repair of the bad-block. You should overwrite the affected files with known-good copies.

• The hard disk has run out of "spare blocks" to re-map the "bad blocks", which is a serious problem.

• The I/O-errors are not caused by "bad blocks" but by something else. There are a lot of severe issues that can cause I/O-errors including bad cabling, defective disk controllers, etc.

Our well-meant suggestion for dealing with disks that constantly emit I/O-errors is the following procedure:

• Erase and format the disk in Disk Utility with the option to overwrite the disk with zeroes.

• Test the disk e.g. by filling it with copies of a very large disk image and then mounting all those disk images.

• If the disk still emits I/O-errors during this test you can throw it away (or replace under warranty). If the replacement disk in the very same slot has the same issues it may be a hardware issue (cabling, controller, etc). If the disk doesn't emit the errors anymore during the test you can continue using it.

Please note, you can find more information about the #1 source of I/O-errors, "bad blocks", and advice how to deal with them here and some more information can be found here and here. Also, some commercial utilities like Drive Genius can try to fix "bad blocks".


Q: Can SMARTReporter predict every possible disk failure? 

A:

No! There is no way that all hard disk drive failures can be be predicted, because of the physical nature of hard disk drive failures, only some of them can be predicted but NOT ALL of them (the situation may be a bit better with SSDs as they have no moving parts). There is no magic technology to look into the future with absolute certainty. SMARTReporter doesn't make predictions about disk failures itself, but rather relies on the built-into-the-disk prediction called S.M.A.R.T. and therefore is only as good as S.M.A.R.T. itself.


Straight from the ReadMe: "Please note that a S.M.A.R.T. alert does not mean that your disk will certainly fail completely, nor can S.M.A.R.T. (or I/O-error checking) catch all possible disk problems before they happen - it's just a very valuable indicator. Please note that SMARTReporter is NOT a substitute for regular backups!."


Just as not every disk failure can be predicted, a S.M.A.R.T. failure doesn't mean that your disk will fail with absolute certainty in the nearest future. It is possible that even disks with a S.M.A.R.T. error (seem to) work fine, at least for some period of time. Especially short transient S.M.A.R.T. errors often do not necessarily indicate a complete disk failure. In any case the disk should be replaced, and disks under warranty generally can be replaced for free when exhibiting S.M.A.R.T. errors.


To increase disk failure prediction accuracy, SMARTReporter checks for I/O-errors in addition to S.M.A.R.T. errors - many disks fail with I/O-errors indicating problems but without S.M.A.R.T. error. But even the combination of S.M.A.R.T. checking and I/O-error checking is not able to detect all possible disk problems before they happen  

 

Regarding the prediction of disk problems its important to note that most things that people recognize as "hard disk problems" actually aren't. The software (operating system and especially the file-system) can render disks useless and systems un-bootable without the real hardware having any problems - a re-format and re-install cures all problems (except the data loss) in these cases. SMARTReporter doesn't concern itself at all with software-level problems, and you should definitely do regular file-system checks in addition.


Q: Why does SMARTReporter report another S.M.A.R.T. status than Disk Utility?

A:

Actually, it does not! All the reports of this behavior I've got to date have been based on this: sometimes S.M.A.R.T. errors only appear for a short period of time, and might have switched back to "Verified" until you check it in "Disk Utility". Open "Disk Utility" right after SMARTReporter has performed the check on the drive and you should see that it agrees that the drive is failing. If not, contact our support for debugging of the issue.

Also, note that Disk Utility does only check the S.M.A.R.T. summary status, while SMARTReporter can also check self-test results. If SMARTReporter determines a failed self-test (but OK summary-status), Disk Utility will obviously still be telling you the disk is fine (summary-status-wise).

Note that Disk Utility does not show any S.M.A.R.T. status for FileVault2 encrypted disks, but Apple's System Profiler does.


Q: Why does SMARTReporter report another S.M.A.R.T. status than SMART Utility, TechTool Pro or DriveDX?

A:

SMARTReporter (like Apples Disk Utility.app) only looks at the S.M.A.R.T. summary status, which is an overall value calculated (by the disk) from the individual S.M.A.R.T. properties.

Supposedly SMART Utility and TechTool Pro have mechanisms to calculate their very own summary status from the individual properties itself - ignoring the summary status S.M.A.R.T. provides - whether this really provides superior error-prediction is not known. 

In order to confuse all of their users they mislabel their very own prediction status as the official 'S.M.A.R.T. status' (TechToolPro, SMART Utility) which is WRONG or as something called 'Advanced S.M.A.R.T. Status' which just does NOT EXIST as part of the S.M.A.R.T.-status.


Q: What about the polling interval for the S.M.A.R.T. status, doesn't every few hours suffice?

A:

The default polling interval in SMARTReporter is 30 minutes for the main disk and 180 minutes for other disks. S.M.A.R.T. checks are essentially "cost free" and take only a few milliseconds to perform. However, if the disk is currently "sleeping" it has to be spun-up in order for the check to be performed, which may incur some unwanted noise or vibration. While hard-disks in the 90s had some kind of limitation how often they could be spun-up and down, this doesn't really apply anymore. Therefore spinning-up disks to perform the check does not reduce their lifetime.

The reason for the lower check-interval on the boot disk is that is likely spun-up anyway all the time anyway, while other disks are more likely to be idle and spun-down.

There are several reasons for performing the S.M.A.R.T. check every 30 minutes instead of every few hours:

• Some S.M.A.R.T. errors are "transient" and occur only for short periods of time. While these are not as "fatal" as longer and "sticking" S.M.A.R.T. errors you will still want to know about them, and the likelihood of catching them with a multi-hour interval would be low

• Since S.M.A.R.T. checks are "free", there is no reason to perform them only every few hours (though, reducing the interval to much less than 30 minutes also doesn't make sense)

• If a S.M.A.R.T. failure occurs you really want to know about it as soon as possible and not some hours later.

• The excellent "smartmontools" for SMART checking have a default polling interval of 20 minutes

 

Q: Which disks can SMARTReporter actually check for problems?

A:

SMARTReporter can not check all physically connected disks, which disks are checked depends on the actual check:

• S.M.A.R.T. checks can only be performed on ATA/SATA/eSATA disks but not on USB/FireWire disks, unless you install additional software, please see the next question about that. Additionally, only disks which are currently mounted (have at least one mounted partition/volume) are checked. Also, note that even some internal disks are not S.M.A.R.T. compatible:

    * the "OWC Aura SSD for Mac Pro" 

• I/O-Error checks are performed for all disks which are currently mounted.

• Disk-Space checks are performed for all disks which are currently mounted.

• R.A.I.D. checks are performed for all connected R.A.I.D. sets.


Q: Does SMARTReporter support S.M.A.R.T. checking on external disks (USB/FireWire)?

A:

External eSATA disks should work just fine but USB and FireWire generally don't support S.M.A.R.T. checking on Mac OS X unless you install 3rd party extensions, see below.


Because SMARTReporter relies on the S.M.A.R.T. implementation of Mac OS X, it only supports ATA, SATA or eSATA disks, if you want S.M.A.R.T. support for your SCSI, FireWire or USB disk, send feedback to Apple.


All SCSI and some FireWire/USB disk could work if Apple implemented S.M.A.R.T. checking for SCSI, USB & FireWire in Mac OS X (SCSI pass-through). Note that some disks could never work if their bridge controller doesn't pass support the necessary features (see also this and this, and this).


GOOD NEWS: There is a new solution that enables S.M.A.R.T. checking for external USB and FireWire disks, a third party project that implements the missing support that Apple left out of stock Mac OS X.

Installing the software provided by this project should enable S.M.A.R.T. checking for your USB/FireWire disks, provided that this is even possible for your disk. Please note that this is an external project not supported by CoreCode in any way and installing 3rd party kernel extensions is a generally unsafe procedure.


Q: Does SMARTReporter support S.M.A.R.T. checking on disks attached to PCI-ATA-cards?

A:

SMARTReporter depends on the built-in S.M.A.R.T. functions of Mac OS X, only disks that the S.M.A.R.T. subsystem of Mac OS X supports can work in SMARTReporter. Whether disks attached to ATA-cards support S.M.A.R.T. depends on the specific ATA-card and it's driver.


ATA-Cards known NOT to work:

• ACARD Technology AEC-6280M

• ACARD Technology AEC-6880M

• Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P

• Sonnet Tempo SATA ExpressCard/34

• SIIG Ultra-ATA 100/133 Pro


ATA-Cards known to work:

• Sonnet Tempo-133 ATA

• Sonnet Tempo-X SATA

• Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P

• Sonnet Tempo SATA X4P

• Sonnet Tempo SATA E4i

• Sonnet Tempo SATA X4i

• SIIG 4-port SATA (Model CN2529 SC-SA4M12)


If your disk is not seen by SMARTReporter you could do the following to ensure it's not a bug in SMARTReporter:

1.) Ensure the HDD in question is spun-up (by accessing files on it)

2.) Open Disk Utility.app and select said HDD (not the partition on it) and search at the bottom for something about "S.M.A.R.T. Status" (Note that Disk Utility does not show any S.M.A.R.T. status for FileVault2 encrypted disks, instead use Apple's System Profiler.)


There you should either find "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified" which means your HDD is supported (by Mac OS X), in the the other cases "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not supported" or nothing there at all, it is not supported.


So if your HDD is (in Disk Utility.app)

a) SUPPORTED: It should also be supported by SMARTReporter, and if not please contact our support so it can be fixed.

b) NOT SUPPORTED: this is most likely the failure of the driver of your ATA card in this case the blame is on your ATA card/driver manufacturer there is nothing that can be done to support it in SMARTReporter.


Q: Why would I need SMARTReporter although S.M.A.R.T. checking is built into Mac OS X?

A:

Because Mac OS X only checks the S.M.A.R.T. status when you open "Disk Utility.app" and select the disk in question.

You probably don't want to do this every few minutes, SMARTReporter automates these checks at an defined interval and notifies you when it turns bad.

Also, SMARTReporter now does a lot more than just checking the S.M.A.R.T. status, it also checks for I/O-errors, which are an important problem indicator. 

Additional optional checks for R.A.I.D. sets (triggered by degraded or offline sets) and available free disk space are also included.


Q: Will running SMARTReporter prevent my Mac or its disks from going to (idle) sleep?

A:

DISK SLEEP: SMARTReporter wakes (spins) up your hard disks for the S.M.A.R.T. check to be performed. Since the default SMARTReporter check interval for disks is much larger than the idle sleep delay (10 minutes) it will not cause your disks to be constantly running. Since the boot disk is likely to be accessed most of the time (and therefore not sleeping anyway), the default checking interval for the boot disk (30 min) is much lower than for the other disks (180 minutes), which are more likely to be asleep. Since recent hard disks support an near infinite number of spin-up/spin-down cycles there is no detrimental effect of SMARTReporter's need to occasionally wake disks on the disk lifetime.

SYSTEM SLEEP: SMARTReporter does not have any effect on your Mac going to idle sleep after the time you've specified in the "System Preferences" at all.


Q: Why does SMARTReporter claim to check more disks than I actually have?

A:

This may occur if you are using the "full-disk-encryption" that was introduced in Mac OS X 10.7. There is no real problem here it just means the disk containing the encrypted partition was checked twice. The other cause could be if a R.A.I.D. is attached, then the individual disks as well as the "RAID volume" will be checked.


Q: Does SMARTReporter work with SSDs?

A:

SMARTReporter "works" with SSDs in the sense that it recognizes them, and if they support S.M.A.R.T. it will check their summary-status and attributes and alert you if the status turns "failing". The question now is whether the SSD drive supports S.M.A.R.T. - which was designed to predict mechanical failures, which SSDs do not suffer from. However, SSDs also can also become broken, not because of mechanical failures but because of exhaustion of the limited number of write cycles. Some SSD drives report these write cycles as S.M.A.R.T. attribute (which can be inspecting by right clicking a drive in SMARTReporter) and report a failing S.M.A.R.T. summary status if the limit is approaching - in this case running SMARTReporter is just as useful as with a conventional drive - or even more so because only some mechanical failures can be predicted but the exhaustion of write cycles is determinable. To find out if your specific SSD drive does support S.M.A.R.T. - and to what extent - your best option is to ask your vendor. You can find out who is your vendor by going to "About Mac", then "System Report", and then choosing the item "Serial-ATA". Very often a Google search with that information will give you the answer you need. If not, the vendor's technical support will usually be able to provide you with the information. If all else fails, you may find help on the smartmontools support mailing list, but you will have to join in order to participate (or search the archives).

In case your SSD supports a 'SSD-health-attribute' the current health is always displayed in SMARTReporter's menu if you did not disable the automated S.M.A.R.T. attribute checking. Our complementary 'SSDReporter' supports even more comprehensive SSD-health checking with alerts when SSD-health decreases. Note that some SSDs do not support S.M.A.R.T. at all - see the question 'Which disks can SMARTReporter actually check for problems?'.


Q: Does SMARTReporter support 'Fusion'-disks?

A:

Yes, SMARTReporter supports 'Fusion' disks. A 'Fusion' disk actually consists of both a SSD and a mechanical HDD working together. SMARTReporter recognizes both disks independently and checks them both for problems.


Q: Why is my SMARTReporter icon yellow?

A:

SMARTReporter’s icon can turn yellow for a number of reasons.


While a red icon indicates that a disk problem has been found, a yellow icon just means that something with the configuration is not valid (anymore).


The reason for the yellow icon should always become obvious when opening SMARTReporter’s interface. on the main status tab you should see which check or notification causes the yellow icon. 


Also, when opening SMARTReporter's main window while having a yellow icon, an alert dialogue explaining why the icon is yellow will be opened.


This screenshot shows SMARTReporter when a problem with the e-mail notification causes a yellow icon.


The following reasons can cause SMARTReporter's icon to go yellow:


• if you use the ‘launch application’ notification but later remove the selected application to launch, you’ll get a yellow icon to let you know this won’t work anymore.

• if you use the ‘on-screen’ notification and set it to use the 3rd party ‘Growl’ notification mechanism but later uninstall ‘Growl', you’ll get a yellow icon to let you know this won’t work anymore.

• if you enable the ‘I/O-error’ check but later move to a non-admin account where this check can’t be performed (anymore, on current system versions) you’ll get a yellow icon to let you know that you have enabled a check that can’t actually be performed.

• the most common cause for a yellow icon will be e-mail delivery. this can happen in two ways - either:


- SMARTReporter has tried to send an e-mail (either because of the ‘daily status report’ or because a failure-notification mail) but was unable to send the e-mail.

- there is also a setting called ‘verify e-mail settings’ (see here) which is on by default and checks if e-mail sending would theoretically be possible, warning with a yellow icon if it isn’t possible. If this check determines a problem your e-mail configuration panel will look like this.


Why can e-mail sending or the e-mail verification fail? This depends on which setting you've chosen:

When using e-mail delivery through our server - sending can fail:

• when your internet connection is offline or very unreliable.

• some configuration or software on your Mac blocks SMARTReporter from accessing our e-mail server. e.g. software like 'Little Snitch' is known to block outgoing network connections.

Additionally when sending using 'custom settings' sending through your server can also fail if your username/password combination or encryption settings are no longer valid or some change on the server has made it incompatible with our SMTP implementation. 


The most common case for a yellow icon connected to e-mail sending is when your Mac is offline. if your Mac is offline just once while SMARTReporter tries to send an e-mail (either because of the ‘daily status report’ or because a failure-notification mail) then you'll get a yellow icon. However, the ‘verify e-mail settings’ will only issue a 'yellow icon' warning if it detects that SMARTReporter is offline for 4 consecutive times while this check is being done. With the default interval of 3 days you’ll get a yellow icon if the Mac is offline for 12 days. In any case, you can just turn off this check to prevent getting a yellow icon when the Mac is offline for prolonged periods of time. If you just want to get rid of the yellow icon and restore the green icon we’d suggest to just deactivate the ‘verify settings’ feature and then send a ‘test mail’ again. If this succeeds SMARTReporter will know it can send e-mails again and the icon will turn green. If sending the test mail fails something could be blocking the connection and you need to investigate.


Q: Why does the "Disk-Space-Check" not match the values seen in the Finder?

A:

Starting with Mac OS X "Mavericks" 10.9, the Finder does not report the actual free-space on a volume. It actually reports the disk space that could be free if it would just delete some stuff, as documented here. Especially “Local Time Machine” backups can fill up your entire boot disk, even when the Finder reports that the disk is still mostly empty. SMARTReporter, however will report the actual free disk space which may be lower than what Finder tells you. Only in macOS "High Sierra" 10.13 Apple has included the necessary APIs for 3rd party apps to determine free disk space in the same manner as the Finder, which SMARTReporter will use starting with v3.1.14. So, the free disk-space as reported from SMARTReporter should match the Finder on 10.13 and later as well as 10.8 and earlier, while on 10.9 - 10.12 SMARTReporter will report actual values that can be lower than what the Finder tells you.

Further minor possible differences from Finder's values stem from the fact that SMARTReporter still reports sizes in the binary system for megabytes (1024^2) and gigabytes (1024^3) while Mac OS X has switched to using the decimal system (1000^2 and 1000^3) from Mac OS X 10.6 onwards.


Q: How can i make SMARTReporter do things like playing a loud sound when it detects a disk problem?

A:

SMARTReporter includes a number of built-in notification mechanisms that should be universal useful like on-screen notification, e.mail, etc. Some users may wish for different notification mechanisms. For these users we have these suggestions:

1.) you can set up rules in your Mail client to perform arbitrary tasks when receiving SMARTReporter's disk problem notification mails

2.) if you install "Growl" and set the on-screen notification type to Growl you can let Growl handle SMARTReporter's disk problem notification in arbitrary ways, e.g. by pushing the notification to your iPhone

3.) we've included a "Launch Application" notification type which can launch arbitrary apps or open arbitrary files. You can just select a MP3 there and the notification will open the MP3 just as if you had double-clicked it in the Finder. By default iTunes should start playing the MP3. You can also select any Script Editor application. This could help to prevent a scenario where you would not hear the sound because your Mac is currently set to mute. A simple Apple Script to play a sound at full volume would look like this:


set volume output volume 100

repeat

do shell script "afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Sosumi.aiff"

beep

end repeat


You can also use an even more sophisticated alarm sound script made by user Michael S. which is downloadable here.


In any case we suggest testing your notifications. The easiest way is by enabling the disk-space check and increasing the warning threshold until a notification is triggered.


Q: How can I uninstall SMARTReporter?

A:

0.) Optional: Uncheck "Start SMARTReporter on login" in the Preferences of SMARTReporter

1.) Select "Quit" from SMARTReporter's menu

2.) Drag the "SMARTReporter" application from your 'Applications' folder to the 'Trash'

3.) Optional: Delete the following files/directories manually or by using our 'Reset to factory defaults tool'

~/Library/Application Support/SMARTReporter/

~/Library/Preferences/com.corecode.SMARTReporter.plist


Q: I've set SMARTReporter not to display an icon in the Menu or the Dock. How do I get it back?

A:

To get the icon back permanently, hold down alt/option while starting SMARTReporter.

Since this may be difficult to do when it is automatically started at log-in, you can also double-click SMARTReporter when it is already running (but hidden) to access the preferences window. This will just open the preferences window, giving you the change to inspect or change the settings. You can also hold down alt/option while doing so to show the Dock icon and make SMARTReporter not be invisible anymore.

In case that doesn't work, terminate SMARTReporter using /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app and then move its preferences file (com.corecode.SMARTReporter.plist in the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder) to the trash, and start it again.


Q: How reliable are the e-mail problem notification mechanisms?

A:

SMARTReporter currently offers three different mechanisms for sending e-mails. Sending through our server is the recommended and only officially supported method, because it is the most reliable one.


• Sending through our servers: this option requires zero configuration on your part and should always succeed when you have a working internet connection. If the option doesn't work for you please ensure you allow outgoing internet connections to www.corecode.io, have spelled your e-mail address exactly correct and don't block or spam-filter e-mails from <notification@corecode.io>. Especially comcast.net and mindspring.com are known to block some incoming mails, if you have problems there, try delivering to a different address. Please note the only "private" information transmitted in your mails is your e-mail address and we don't store or collect data on our server in any way, except for your safety in case the delivery fails, to ensure that the e-mail can be re-transmitted to you automatically or manually. This delivery option automatically re-tries e-mail delivery for up to 25 minutes when sending fails (no internet connection?) to increase reliability. Choose this option if you are unsure. The only case where this option is not preferred is if you have an e-mail account that automatically blocks all automated incoming e-mails, but that can be easily verified with sending a test-mail.

• Sending through Mail.app: This tells Apple's Mail.app to send the e-mail. This option requires zero configuration within SMARTReporter but requires you to setup (and maintain) a working e-mail delivery configuration within Apple's Mail.app. This option is not extremely reliable because sending e-mails can fail if Mail.app misbehaves, is not properly configured anymore or has set the spelling correction set to "Check on send" (SMARTReporter tries to detect and inform you about this case). We've contacted Apple about the reliability problems with sending automated e-mails without user-intervention through Mail.app (especially with the spell check) and they said they won't fix the problems and automated e-mail delivery should best be done using own servers (therefore this option is our recommended one).

• Sending with "custom settings": This sends with an own e-mail sending (SMTP) implementation with the settings you've provided and requires detailed configuration. This option is more reliable than sending through Mail.app but still not as reliable as sending through our servers. Delivery can fail if your configuration is not valid anymore or the SMTP server is upgraded in a way that makes it incompatible with our SMTP implementation, though SMARTReporter tries to detect and inform you about these cases.


Note that sending a "test-mail" from SMARTReporter may seem like it succeeded (delivery to server OK), but the e-mail may still be blocked by the destination server or caught in some spam prevention, so make sure you actually receive the test mail in your inbox!


Please let us know if you rely on a e-mail delivery mechanism besides sending through our servers, else they may be removed in the future.

Please note that all e-mail delivery mechanisms will fail if your internet connection is offline (for extended time periods) or external factors that prevent outgoing connections (firewall?) or incoming e-mail (full mailbox? try our MailboxAlert app to prevent this from happening! zealous spam-filter?) block the delivery. Therefore the completely reliable local notification mechanisms should not be turned off even if you are using e-mail notifications.


Q: Does SMARTReporter work when no user is logged-on?

A:

No, there are several reasons for this, including code & interface complexity, difficulties with updating and requiring admin privileges for installing system daemons, but most of all the restrictions from Apple for apps in the Mac App Store prevent this.

You can use the smartmontools if you need this feature, a UNIX command-line application.


Q: How to change how long SMARTReporter preserved collected data for plotting?

A:

By default SMARTReporter deletes entries older than 120 days. Entries between 120 days and 25 days are trimmed to a single data point per check, per day. All data younger than 25 days is retained.

You can change the cutoff day when SMARTReporter starts trimming data in Terminal.app: defaults write com.corecode.SMARTReporter compress_database_entries_olderthan -int 25

You can change the cutoff day when SMARTReporter starts erasing data in Terminal.app: defaults write com.corecode.SMARTReporter erase_database_entries_olderthan -int 120


Q: How can I limit the size of the log-file?

The option to limit the log-file size was added more than six years ago to the old SMARTReporter 2.x., however it was removed again in version 3.0.

The log file grows so slowly that its size won't be a concern even when running it constantly (24/7 !) for multiple years. Typical growth is less than 1MB per year.

What is a concern is the size of the database, that why it is trimmed to only contain the data for the last 25 days automatically (see above question).


Q: Does SMARTReporter work under non-admin accounts?

Yes, SMARTReporter works fully under non-admin accounts, with the exception of the I/O error check, which can only be performed when SMARTReporter is launched by an admin user.

Note that I/O error checking under non-admin accounts worked previously, but Apple has removed this possibility with a system update.

There are two workarounds that may help you to get the I/O error check to work under non-admin accounts, but both may have negative security implications


1.) Elevate SMARTReporter to admin rights, as root edit the sudoers file by executing visudo and create the following entry where MyUnPrivAccountUserName is the account login name

MyUnPrivAccountUserName ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /Applications/SMARTReporter.app/Contents/MacOS/SMARTReporter

Then logged in as the user added to the sudoers file, download this file and put it into your ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ directory.


or


2.) Lower the rights needed to read the system by performing "sudo chmod 644 /private/var/log/system.log" and finding a way to have this repeated after every system log-file rotation


Q: The S.M.A.R.T. attributes for my disk show 'Pre-fail', is my disk going to fail?

A:

Pre-fail does NOT mean your hard disk is nearly failing - from the  smartmontools documentation:

"The Attribute table printed out by smartctl also shows the "TYPE" of the Attribute. Attributes are one of two possible types: Pre-failure or Old age. Pre-failure Attributes are ones which, if less than or equal to their threshold values, indicate pending disk failure. Old age, or usage Attributes, are ones which indicate end-of-product life from old-age or normal aging and wearout, if the Attribute value is less than or equal to the threshold. Please note: the fact that an Attribute is of type ’Pre-fail’ does not mean that your disk is about to fail! It only has this meaning if the Attribute´s current Normalized value is less than or equal to the threshold value."

Note that the advanced tools including the attribute-display are for experienced users only and are not part of the officially supported core feature set of SMARTReporter. For more information about these features go to the documentation of the  smartmontools which are performing these functions: here, here and here.


Q: Why does SMARTReporter display only one menu icon although i have multiple HDDs?

A:

The reason there is only one icon regardless of the number of installed hard disk drives is simple:

S.M.A.R.T. errors (or failing hard drives for that matter) are very rare and most users will never encounter such an situation, so it seems like a big waste (of menu space) to display multiple icons.

The icon turns red if at least one of your hard disk drives has a status of "failing" in any of the enabled disk checks (i.e. S.M.A.R.T. and I/O-error by default). The icon can turn orange if there is is a severe problem performing a disk check or if the used problem notification mechanisms are misconfigured.

In case there is an S.M.A.R.T. error there can be no confusion which HDD is affected, because the details are displayed in the warning dialogue and e-mail, as well as in the log-file and the screen of the failing check under "Detail:".


Q: Why can't I command-drag the menu icon of SMARTReporter?

A:

Apple reserved the command-drag functionality for their own menu-items, and doesn't expose this functionality through the public supported menu-item programming interface.

Some other people have reverse-engineered this private interface for their 3rd party menu-items, but this is kind of a "hack" and has serious drawbacks:

• Such menu-items run in system memory and could take down the whole user interface

• The programming interface may change with every System-update, leaving 3rd party menu-items that use this unsupported method broken

The only thing that can be done about this situation is to complain to Apple that command-drag doesn't work with menu-items that use the official programming interface (NSStatusItem).