Is there a utility for mac that shows the information of an SSD like the health etc…?

Question

I am wondering if there is a utility for the mac that allows you to see the details of an SSD like the health of the drive, TBW (total bites written), how many running hours etc... In researching for an app of such a kind I found (SSDLife) for windows? It looks like to me that a program like this would be exactly what I would need. The most important information that I need to know about is the TBW (total bites written) on the drive. Because I have heard that once an SSD drive reaches a certain amount of writes it becomes a read only drive, so this information would be invaluable to me.

Answer 1

Check out SSD Health on the Mac App Store: http://ssdhealth.com/macos.html

Answer 2

If you're OK with Command Line utilities, you can always use smartmontools from http://www.smartmontools.org/.

You would need XCode to compile them from source (unless someone here knows binary distribution for Mac OSX), but if I remember correctly I had no issues compiling the package.

I have an OCZ SSD retrofitted into my MBP 15" mid-2010 and I can use smartctl command to monitor various stats, including your Total Bytes Written (called here Lifetime_Writes) as well as Media Wearout Indicator (shown as percentage).

To give you an idea, here's the example output:

MacBook:~😈  smartctl -a /dev/disk0 
smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [x86_64-apple-darwin12.2.0] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Indilinx Everest/Martini based SSDs
Device Model:     OCZ-VERTEX4
Serial Number:    OCZ-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
LU WWN Device Id: 5 e83a97 49c31f44c
Firmware Version: 1.5
User Capacity:    512,110,190,592 bytes [512 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Sat Apr 20 23:39:33 2013 IST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                    was never started.
                    Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      ( 249) Self-test routine in progress...
                    90% of test remaining.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection:        (    0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:            (0x1d) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                    No Auto Offline data collection support.
                    Abort Offline collection upon new
                    command.
                    Offline surface scan supported.
                    Self-test supported.
                    No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                    No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                    power-saving mode.
                    Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x00) Error logging NOT supported.
                    General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time:    (   0) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:    (   0) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 18
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0000   006   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       6
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       2981
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       417
232 Lifetime_Writes         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       14566414269
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0000   100   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       100

SMART Error Log not supported

Warning! SMART Self-Test Log Structure error: invalid SMART checksum.
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]


Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

The exact parameters and stats shown for your SSD might vary, but as it's a free tool, you can try and see for yourself!

Answer 3

This isn't a software recommendation (I see there are already a few posted), but more of a tip. Although SSDs do have a shorter "life" than HDDs, it is still by far a longer life than you'd reach with normal conditions. Your SSD will outlast its own desirability and that of the computer it's in, i.e. by the time it craps out, you probably would have wanted to upgrade your computer anyway. Moral of the story: don't worry about it.

From OCZ's FAQ

"...Generally, you should get many years of solid use out of your SSD…"

Answer 4

Check out DriveDx: http://binaryfruit.com/drivedx . It have free 14-Day Trial version and shows Lifetime Left indicator for SSDs, overall health rating, performance rating, important health indicators and many other useful and important information about SSD.