After reading through the comments in this page I got curious as to how good/bad this app is, and decided that there were sufficient positive reviews to justify me allowing a non-Apple-approved app, and one that requires a driver that is kind of a hack to the system above all. I gave it a try, (with plenty of backups in case something went wrong), and I can tell you that I am incredibly impressed. I understand mileage will very, but this is true with anything in life. In my case, running Mac OS Ventura, latest version as of 2022-11-25 (Sorry if you can't read a date in this format. This is the way databases store dates (display actually) and I am sticking with that.), it works, absolutely, amazingly well, actually. I've used many other tools like this before over the years, but I had never seen something so comprehensive, easy to use, and best of all, so very well documented here: https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx/kb. The one thing that worried me the most was what I read about you not being able to use the software if you boot with the devices connected to your Mac... I mean, it would be a pain to have to shutdown the machine, disconnect all my external drives, boot, open the app, and manually reconnect all devices... But hey, I tested it, and that was NOT so in my case at all. I kept all drives connected before booting, booted up, and the app connected to all my external drives seamlessly! (I have a total of 5+the 1 internal! 2 HDDs, and 3 SSDs.) Interface is nice, extremely functional, the link I provided above explains clearly and without any too technical to follow jargon the functionalities and limitations of the tool, and they document installation, and basically everything you need/could ever ask for. $19.99 for up to 3 machines? For software this good? A bargain if you ask me. That's pretty much it in a nutshell from me.
Just in case this helps anyone, my setup:
iMac Pro (2017) 3.2 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon W. 32 GB 2,666 MHz ECC DDR4, Radeon Pro Vega 56 8GB.
Mac OS Ventura 13.0.1
Drives fully tested and worked with all of them (all drives using APFS, with encryption, except the flash drive):
- 1 TB SSD (internal), Apple proprietary interface (No SMART here. But still a lot of useful info retrieved.)
All others are external:
- 1 TB PNY SSD
- 500 GB Samsung EVO SSD
- 256 GB Micron SSD
- 4 TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS edition HDD (I use this one for my Time Machine backups). Note: Because this drive is used for Time Machine, APFS, and encrypted, I had to create a volume separate from the ones TM uses for its backups. Apparently there is something special about TM APFS volumes that prevents ANY app from reading/writing to the TM volumes (I have 2, because I use the same drive to backup both the iMac Pro, as well the laptop, a MacBook Pro - M1 Pro 14")
- 1 TB Barracuda HDD
Some of these are connected to my USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports (the iMac Pro has 4), and some are connected to the regular old style USB ports (iMac Pro has another 4 of those), and one drive is even not connected directly, but via a cheap USB hub that I bought years ago, because at this point you can imagine I am running out of ports, even with 8 natively available, since I also have other peripherals connected...
I have yet to install the app on the laptop and test it there. But at this point, I am pretty confident it will work as well. If not, I will revisit this review and let you guys know.
I hope this helps. Best, R.
