By Aaron Lee
DriveDx is the first utility of its kind to have a real user-friendly Mac-style interface. Key features: • support of modern SSDs and HDDs • real-time SSD/HDD health status monitoring • pre-failure state early detection - DriveDx. The Driver Exchange is an online marketplace for HGV and van driving jobs. We offer freelance drivers the chance to work directly for hirers or agencies. Our technology automates many of the tasks usually involved in freelancing, meaning less paperwork for the driver and the hirer.
BinaryFruit's DriveDx is a useful Mac solution for SSD and HDD health diagnostics and monitoring. It measures the overall health of both SSD and HDD drives. This allows users to take action to avert the failure, and save themselves from resulting data loss and downtime.
Unlike some drive health diagnostics utilities that simply check built-in S.M.A.R.T. status, DriveDx performs overall drive health diagnostics using drive health indicators (like SSD wear out/endurance, reallocated bad sectors, offline bad sectors, pending sectors, I/O errors, and more) that most closely correlate with drive failures according to the statistics reported in the latest researches focused on identifying drive failure trends.
This gives a user a comprehensive picture of a current drive health status and enables foreseeing potential problems with drive failure and loss of sensitive data. What's more, DriveDx shows this information on a user-friendly Mac-style interface in an easy-to-understand format.
The software is a combined drive health analysis and forecasting tool. It monitors and analyzes changes to S.M.A.R.T. attributes in order to continuously evaluate drive health status and predict drive failures. In addition to 'Failed' and 'OK' drive statutes DriveDx supports 'Warning' and 'Failing' statuses indicating that a drive is in a pre-failure status and backup of sensitive data is highly recommended.
DriveDx performs both SSD and HDD health diagnostics. Moreover, it uses a separate set of indicators for SSD and HDD to monitor drive health status. This is important as a SSD works differently from a HDD, and requires a different algorithm to check its health status. Also, SDDs typically are more dependent on firmware than HDDs, and DriveDx has been programmed to support many versions of firmware (please see our website for a complete list of supported firmware).
DriveDx lets you configure the delivery of customized drive status and free space reports by e-mail so doesn't require a user's presence to inform about drive status changes. In addition DriveDx can launch built-in drive diagnostics self-tests.
The latest version (1.4) supports the 'dark mode' of Mac OS X Yosemite. The user can now turn off the S.M.A.R.T attribute (health indictor) raw value alert and more.
The software requires macOS 10.6. or newer. It costs $19.99 for a personal license and $39.99 fo ra family license (for up to six computers.)
DriveDx can be purchased from the BinaryFruit website or through the Mac App Store (a personal license only). A demo is available for download.
Apple World Today Rating (out of 5 stars): ★★★★★
DriveDx
Developer:Binary Fruit
Current Version: 1.5.1
Last Updated: 3 years ago
Download Size: 24.4 MB - Download
4.0
Description:
DriveDx is advanced drive health diagnostic and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected drive failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
Unlike most drive utilities, DriveDx does not only monitor the drive’s built-in S.M.A.R.T. status, but also analyzes the changes of all drive health indicators that are closely related to SSD or HDD failures (like SSD wear out / endurance, reallocated bad sectors, offline bad sectors, pending sectors, I/O errors and more) and alerts the user immediately if anything goes wrong. Our drive health diagnostics algorithms are based on the recent researches in this field. The application provides access to all sufficient drive diagnostic data to satisfy any system administrator. DriveDx is the first utility of its kind to have a real user-friendly Mac-style interface.
Key features:
• support of modern SSDs and HDDs
• real-time SSD/HDD health status monitoring
• pre-failure state early detection - DriveDx supports 3 drive health statuses: Ok, Failing (pre-failure) and Failed. (Most of drive utilities support only 'Ok' and 'Failed')
• drive failure prediction based on health indicators that are closely related to SSD or HDD failures
• multi-tier warning system that will inform the user about deviations from the normal state of drive attributes
• drive overall health rating
• drive overall performance rating (if drive supports this subset of indicators)
• SSD lifetime left indicator
• support of drive short and full (extended) self-tests
• save drive(s) health report to file
• automatic drive health reports by email (automatic email reports)
• human-readable drive health indicators (attributes) representation
• different routines for SSD and HDD health evaluation
• drive temperature monitoring
• drive free space monitoring
• history-based drive health evaluation
• S.M.A.R.T. error log
• Growl notifications
• user friendly and intuitive UI
• Retina displays support
Unlike most drive utilities, DriveDx does not only monitor the drive’s built-in S.M.A.R.T. status, but also analyzes the changes of all drive health indicators that are closely related to SSD or HDD failures (like SSD wear out / endurance, reallocated bad sectors, offline bad sectors, pending sectors, I/O errors and more) and alerts the user immediately if anything goes wrong. Our drive health diagnostics algorithms are based on the recent researches in this field. The application provides access to all sufficient drive diagnostic data to satisfy any system administrator. DriveDx is the first utility of its kind to have a real user-friendly Mac-style interface.
Key features:
• support of modern SSDs and HDDs
• real-time SSD/HDD health status monitoring
• pre-failure state early detection - DriveDx supports 3 drive health statuses: Ok, Failing (pre-failure) and Failed. (Most of drive utilities support only 'Ok' and 'Failed')
• drive failure prediction based on health indicators that are closely related to SSD or HDD failures
• multi-tier warning system that will inform the user about deviations from the normal state of drive attributes
• drive overall health rating
• drive overall performance rating (if drive supports this subset of indicators)
• SSD lifetime left indicator
• support of drive short and full (extended) self-tests
• save drive(s) health report to file
• automatic drive health reports by email (automatic email reports)
• human-readable drive health indicators (attributes) representation
• different routines for SSD and HDD health evaluation
• drive temperature monitoring
• drive free space monitoring
• history-based drive health evaluation
• S.M.A.R.T. error log
• Growl notifications
• user friendly and intuitive UI
• Retina displays support
Release Notes:
This update improves overall stability and hardware support, including the following:
• fixed crash on some MacPros with many drives
• fixed crash on some MacPros with many drives
Most Helpful Reviews
Version 1.3.0
Awsome Software - My self built windows PC had a faulty drive and I kept getting errors that it was about to fail(nothing detailing on what the reason for failure was). After searching for hours I found nothing for windows that would give me a more detailed report. So i hooked it up to my mac(via usb cable) and used disc utility, disc utility didn’t even recognize my drive. After downloading this app I was able to see a detailed history and status report on each of my drives. SUPER USEFUL.
Version 1.3.0
![Drivedx Drivedx](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125797044/805740132.jpg)
Needs additional driver for external USB drives - Apparently this app needs an additional driver (outside of the app store) to work with external USB drives. I did not note this on the description. Since I know nothing about this external driver I will not install it. The need for this driver with external USB drives should be clearly stated in the app description.
More Reviews for Current Version
Version 1.5.1
No Dishonest Advertising Here — Please Read This... - To answer RHCNYC, the need for a third party driver is a result of Apple’s kext driver not supporting the S.M.A.R.T. status interrogation of External USB Drives. Apple’s drivers support Thunderbolt Drives only. That is not the fault of Binary Fruit.There are programmers that can create drivers to add support to get the information from External USB Drives. Of necessity, it requires installation of a 3rd party extension. I and numerous other users have installed these drivers, and they work perfectly, and without threat to the system. The technique is well-documented on the Binary Fruit support site, and is safe. Note that in El Capitan and Sierra, system integrity protection (SIP / rootless) must be disabled temporarily to allow the installation to succeed. After the install and reboot, SIP can be reenabled to restore full protection to macOS.I agree that reference to this correctable limitation should be made in the Mac App Store description for DriveDX. If one visits the support site prior to making an Mac App Store purchase, and looks over the information, it is not a difficult to discover the limitation and implement the solution as presented. If you are dissatisfied with the program, you can request a refund from Apple, but having used several similar apps, I can attest that of the Drive Status apps available to macOS, DriveDx is the best!
Version 1.5.1
Dishonest Advertising - I spent $25 on this program to check the status of my drives.The problem is, while it happily checks the status of my internal drive (of which there is one), it will not check the status of external drives.As most people who do anything more than take photos of their food and have 12 mp3s, we’re likely to have external drives. And as these drives are the ones that get the most abuse ,clearly these are the ones that require the most observation.So what does this company do? AFTER you install the software, and try to click on one of the external drives, it notifies you that Mac OS X doesn’t allow you to check the status of external drives with out a Third Party extension.Clearly, this is something that they knew about before selling you the software, but leave it out of the description in a deceptive manner. This is not a $5 piece of software.And installing freeware from a third party site that, in my case, makes no mention of Sierra, is really frustrating, and indicative of the lack of ethics these companies have nowadays. I’m incredibly frustrated and disappointed in this ‘non-disclosure’.BUYER BEWARE!
![Review Review](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125797044/160878100.png)
Version 1.5.1
Wo this company is great I report the crashing problem and they fixed it ASAP - The 1.5.0 version is Bad this version crashes on launch This version 1.5.1 is great I love this product and this company. They fixed the problem in just a two days.Eveyone needs to support this company!..
Version 1.5.1
Lots of potential... - I have a Macbook Pro 2012 (MD102LL/A) that Ive recently changed out the optical drive for a second hard drive. I was having 2nd HDD issues while transfering larger files (3GB and up) and wanted to keep an eye on what exactly was going on when it failed. I dont know if the app itself has the cure for Sata III connectivity issues, but my hard drive hasnt failed over the last couple 10GB file transfers. I came across this app by a guy that was having similiar issues as me and have been relatively pleased with what it has to offer. The description states it does have drive temp monitoring however I have another app (Monit) that contradicts this. I trust the Monit app as it shows real-time change every couple seconds when the DriveDX app requires a full app restart to show new values. I think the developer should include real-time temp monitoring.I really hope the developer will use their profits for further research into the Manuf. porprietary values for further releases.The $25 mark was a bit steep for the lack of info it provides at the time, Id expect an app like this to be around $15.My comp specs:Mid-2012 Macbook Pro 2.9 i7OptiBay from Ifixit.com with 2TB Seagate (Part number: ST2000LM003 HN-M201RAD)16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Ramm upgradeCorsair Force LE SSD 480GB for OS Drive