Recommend a Hard Drive health scan program

[vim147]

I have a 1TB Seagate with lot of movies/music on which sometimes is temperamental and slow.

Is there a free program I can use to scan it for faults/bad sectors to see the condition of it.

I have used Disk Utility and it comes up as fine.

 

[ssmed]

Alsoft DiskWarrior was the go to for this for a long time, but security changes and the move to APFS has made such tools less easy to use and develop, but it remains a useful well supported tool. Not sure its worth it for one drive – rather depends on the value of the data. Apple have improved HD housekeeping over the years and concepts such as defragmentation are largely redundant for the user, whereas 20 years ago you could often see a noticeable difference after performing this. To keep the disk health, keep it attached for more than quick operations and don't fill it more than 75%.

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

I have a 1TB Seagate with lot of movies/music on which sometimes is temperamental and slow.

Is there a free program I can use to scan it for faults/bad sectors to see the condition of it.

I have used Disk Utility and it comes up as fine.

If Disk Utility does not find any problems with the disk health, than another program will probably find no problems either. There are some things you could check:

1) Is the disk almost full (> 90%)? This will slow down the disk considerably. Clean the disk / make more space.
2) Are there lots of small files on the disk or is the disk heavily fragmented? Defragment the disk.
3) Is the Seagate an external USB drive? USB ports can vary in speed. Check if other programs/services are taking a lot of CPU time, or connect to another usb port (if possible).
4) Are you using a docking station or USB hub to connect the drive? Try other ports on the hub or try connecting the drive directly to your computer.
5) How old is your Seagate drive? Maybe time to replace it?

IMO, I doubt that another program besides Disk Utility will come up with different results and I would not spend any time or effort in further walking that path.

But your miles/opinion may vary of course:

A link to the 'top 8' free Mac disk health scan software:

https://www.insanelymac.com/blog/best-apps-to-test-mac-hard-drive/

A link to the 'top 10' free Mac disk diagnostic and repair software:

https://www.insanelymac.com/blog/mac-disk-repair-software/

Use at your own risk

 

[vim147]

If Disk Utility does not find any problems with the disk health, than another program will probably find no problems either. There are some things you could check:

1) Is the disk almost full (> 90%)? This will slow down the disk considerably. Clean the disk / make more space.
2) Are there lots of small files on the disk or is the disk heavily fragmented? Defragment the disk.
3) Is the Seagate an external USB drive? USB ports can vary in speed. Check if other programs/services are taking a lot of CPU time, or connect to another usb port (if possible).
4) Are you using a docking station or USB hub to connect the drive? Try other ports on the hub or try connecting the drive directly to your computer.
5) How old is your Seagate drive? Maybe time to replace it?

IMO, I doubt that another program besides Disk Utility will come up with different results and I would not spend any time or effort in further walking that path.

But your miles/opinion may vary of course:

A link to the 'top 8' free Mac disk health scan software:

https://www.insanelymac.com/blog/best-apps-to-test-mac-hard-drive/

A link to the 'top 10' free Mac disk diagnostic and repair software:

https://www.insanelymac.com/blog/mac-disk-repair-software/

Use at your own risk

I recently installed a SSD in my Mac Mini and the 1TB spinning drive was installed as a secondary. I got the feeling the cheap cable I bought off eBay to connect the 1TB internally might be slowing things down.

Although the media files from the 1TB spinning drive seems to be playing without problems.

 

[MarkC426]

I have a 1TB Seagate with lot of movies/music on which sometimes is temperamental and slow.

Is there a free program I can use to scan it for faults/bad sectors to see the condition of it.

I have used Disk Utility and it comes up as fine.

Above all else, ensure you have a copy of this drive.
If it is temperamental, you don't want it to go pop.

If the data is important to you, consider a paid app, moving forward.

 

[Fishrrman]

Mark has it right in the post above this one.

Your music and movies ARE NOT SAFE if they are stored on only one drive.
If that drive fails... all will be lost.

My recommendation:
- Get a 1tb "bare" SSD. It can be either a 2.5" SATA SSD, or perhaps an "nvme" blade SSD.
- Get an enclosure to hold it. For a SATA SSD, get a USB3 2.5" enclosure (there are many of them).
For an nvme blade SSD, get a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure (also many from which to choose).

Put the drive into the enclosure and erase it using disk utility.
For external storage of music and video, I suggest you use "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format" (also called HFS+).

Now, download CarbonCopyCloner from here:

Download CCC - Bombich Software

www.bombich.com

CCC is FREE TO USE for 30 days, doing this will cost you nothing.

Use CCC to "clone" the contents of the Seagate HDD to your newly-built SSD.
It will take a little while.
When done, you will have AN EXACT COPY of the HDD on the new SSD.
And it will be MUCH "snappier" to use.
Now, the SSD becomes your "primary media storage drive".

If you do this, I predict you will become a VERY happy user.

What you can do next:
Use disk utility to ERASE your old Seagate drive to HFS+.
DO NOT USE APFS on a platter-based drive -- it will overly fragment the drive, and you may hear it "thrashing".
Now, with the Seagate drive newly-erased and "empty", use CCC to "RE-clone" the contents of the SSD BACK TO the Seagate.

Now you will have a "clean backup copy" of the SSD.
Keep the Seagate drive in a safe place.
Now you have TWO COPIES of your music and videos -- better protection against drive failure!