How To Be Warned Of Impending Hard Drive Failure [Mac]

How To Be Warned Of Impending Hard Drive Failure [Mac]:
Don’t let a dying hard drive on your Mac catch you by surprise. Be warned before anything happens to your precious data. SmartReporter is a free application for your Mac that can warn you of hard drives problems, thanks to S.M.A.R.T. data. This gives you a heads up, because errors on a hard drive can mean problems are coming soon.
Your warning can come in the form of a Growl popup, an alert dialogue or even an email. Find out if your hard drive has problems before it’s too late to ensure all of your data is backed up, because professional file recovery is expensive.
Hard drives are amazing. They spin extremely fast all the time so that you can create and access data, but everything that moves that quickly and that frequently will break down at some point. We’ve taught you the 5 signs your hard drive might be dying, and shown you the tools Windows users can use to predict the death of a hard drive. We’ve even shown you how to use a Ubuntu Live CD to check your hard drive’s health.
What we haven’t done is shown you a Mac tool for warning you about hard drive decline. SmartReporter is that tool, and it’s remarkably easy to set up and use.

Using SmartReporter

Start up SmartReporter for the first time and the software will scan your hard drives. Once that’s done, you’ll see your drives along with a little bit of information:

If you’re the curious type, you can check out the specific tests run to determine whether or not your drive is healthy. It may however seem cryptic to you.

Are you confused by all of this gibberish? Don’t be overwhelmed- it’s just a list of tests being done on your drive. A quick review of what S.M.A.R.T. data is can be helpful, but basically you need to know that errors on the disk are a sign that things might go wrong soon.
Does an error guarantee that something will go wrong? No, but if you’re seeing errors, there’s a higher chance the drive may die soon. You don’t necessarily need to buy a new hard drive right away, but if you’ve been putting off backing up, now might be a good time.
So if something is going wrong, you’ll want a warning. As I said earlier, there are a few options for this:

Set up whatever warnings your heart desires; you can even run a certain program if you want. SmartReporter will also run in your tray, where you can access it and the information it offers whenever you like:

The icon will even change color depending on the health of your drives, giving you yet another way to stay up-to-date regarding their health.

Download SmartReporter

Ready to install this program? Click here to download SmartReporter. There’s a universal binary, and even a binary for users of OS X 10.3. That’s really old, so chances are if you have a Mac that’s up and running you can install SmartReporter.

Conclusion

If your data is important to you, it’s important you be aware of the health of your hard drive. Macs aren’t magical – the hard drive inside them can fail, just like any drive. Software like this can give you a warning, but it’s not enough. Make sure you’re backing up your data regularly to avoid losing anything forever.
Do you know of another way to be warned of imminent hard drive failure on your Mac? Fill me in in the comments below, where you can also feel free to ask questions.