Mac Hard Drive Test
Aug 04, 2019 To check whether your MacBook is with an HDD or SSD, click on the Apple icon on the top left of your screen, select About This Mac, and select Storage. For example, this MacBook is with an SSD. Hard drive performance is measured in two categories: read speeds and write speeds. The former is a measure of how fast you can open something that already exists, while the latter is how fast you can add something new to your computer’s drive. Discover the world of external hard drives for Mac. Compare portable, USB and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online.
All the data your MacBook uses to operate is stored in a single location: the drive. For many users, this specifically means a hard drive (HDD), which is a physical disk the spins at very high speeds to access chunks of data.
If you’re using a newer Mac, you probably have a solid-state drive (SSD, or flash storage), which is completely electronic with no mechanical parts and thus does not spin.
To check whether your MacBook is with an HDD or SSD, click on the Apple icon on the top left of your screen, select About This Mac, and select Storage.
Hard drive performance is measured in two categories: read speeds and write speeds. The former is a measure of how fast you can open something that already exists, while the latter is how fast you can add something new to your computer’s drive.
Why Should I Test Hard Drive Speed?
Measuring your hard drive speed is one of the easiest and most effective ways to benchmark your MacBook. The data you get by testing will provide a standard to measure customizations such as added extra RAM or drive replacements against, and will also tell you if you need an upgrade in the immediate future.
Knowing your hard drive speed can also help you determine if you’ll be able to run certain programs (such as heavy creative software) effectively or if you don’t have the necessary read and write speeds.
How to Test Hard Drive Speed on a Mac?
To test your HDD, you’re going to need a third-party program, since this functionality isn’t built into macOS. Two of the most popular are BlackMagic and NovaBench, so we’ll show you how to use both.
For context, most modern hard drives have read speeds averaging 120 Mbps and write at 128 Mbps.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
First, you’ll need to download BlackMagic from the Mac App Store (it’s completely free!). Once it is installed, launch the app.
If you only have one hard drive (if you’re not sure, then you probably just have one), all you have to do is hit “START” since the program only has one window.
If you do have more than one drive (such as an external drive), you can navigate to FILE > SELECT TARGET DRIVE to choose which one you would like to test, and how strenuously. You can also CTRL + CLICK or right-click with a mouse to bring up a small menu.
Whichever you choose, your results will be shown on the two large gauges at the top of the window. Since Blackmagic was created for video editors, underneath the main measurements is a series of tables for those creative professionals who need to know what their computer is capable of. If you’re not in that business, however, you can ignore these and focus on your overall speeds instead.
NovaBench
First, download Novabench from the official website or the Mac App Store. The basic version is free, but you can also upgrade to Pro to access more tools if you like the application.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed, open the program and choose “start tests” from the splash screen. There may be a pop up advising you to close other applications, and then NovaBench will proceed with testing.
Once completed, the test results will be saved with the date and time in the application, and you can view them at any time from the NovaBench start screen.
What to Do If My Disk Speed is Slow?
If your hard drive doesn’t seem to be performing up to par, there are a few things you can do to keep your data safe and your MacBook running at its best.
1. Replace the drive
This is the most effective way to get your computer back in order, but it isn’t the best option for everyone. If your MacBook was made after 2013, you probably don’t have this option at all since models made after this point cannot be opened without voiding the warranty. Additionally, the MacBook Air has never been able to be modified.
If you want to replace your drive, you have two options: buy another HDD, or upgrade to an SSD. A new HDD will be cheaper and get you more space for your money but will eventually face the same problems as your current drive. An SSD will offer significantly faster speed and you can consider one of these SSD upgrades for MacBook we listed.
2. Supplement Your Drive
Not sure about replacing the entire drive or physically can’t do it? You can get an external HDD or SSD that plugs in with USB. It will work in tandem with your existing drive and can be a great fall back in case your drive fails or needs a little extra help.
If this sounds like the right solution for you, check out our list of the best external drives for MacBook Pro.
3. Backup Your Data
Since slow read/write speeds could be a sign of the impending death of your hard drive, it’s a good idea to make sure your computer is completely backed up. You’ll need at least as much storage space on the cloud platform (we recommend Google Drive or Dropbox) or an external drive of your choice as you’re currently taking up on your computer.
Then, you can copy your entire library of files, images, videos, and more to this backup location. Many cloud services also offer an automatic backup service, so you never have to worry about accidentally missing your recent files in the event of a hard drive failure. Additionally, getting excess files off your overworked hard drive could help increase its speed.
Final Words
Testing your MacBook hard drive is something everyone should be doing at least occasionally. It provides valuable data for future reference, helps you understand how your computer is functioning and is a good indicator of when it may be time to upgrade a few things.
How has testing your MacBook’s drive speed turned out? Leave us a comment below and tell us what you’ve done with the information you discovered!
Keeping you Mac's hard drive or SSD healthy is hugely important. By monitoring and checking your Mac hard drive's health, you can anticipate potential problems and prevent potentially catastrophic crashes. How do you know if your Mac is working properly?
Mac Hard Drive Test Software
Fortunately, there are a number of tools available that allow to to check the health of a drive and fix problems before they become serious.
Best Apps to Check Your Mac Hard Drive Health
One of the best apps for alerting you to potential problems is iStat Menus, available in Setapp. Once you've installed it, iStatMenus sits in your Mac's menu bar and monitors not just your hard drive, but its CPU, RAM and network traffic, among other things.
iStat Menus, and the other disk monitoring tools available for macOS, monitor what is knows as SMART status. SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and is installed on most hard drives and SSDs. In order to use it, you need software to analyze and display what it finds, and that's where iStatMenus comes in. Check out how to clone mac hard drive.
Monitoring SMART reports won't prevent your hard drive from failing, but it will reduce the likelihood of problems occurring.
Note: As of 2016, Apple no longer allows software tools to check the SMART status of an SSD. So iStatMenus won't repot anything on Macs shipped in 2016 or later.
There are other steps you can take to keep your hard drive or SSD healthy. CleanMyMac X has a number of maintenance routines. While most of them are designed to keep your Mac running smoothly, one of them is an excellent way to keep your hard drive in good shape.
Mac Os Disk Speed Test
How to verify Startup disk
- Launch Setapp, search for CleanMyMac, and open it.
- When CleanMyMac has launched, look on the left hand side of its window for the Speed section and click Maintenance.
- Click the check box next to 'Repair Disk Permissions' to verify startup disk and then click the 'Run' button at the bottom of the window.
- Click OK in the dialog box that opens. Click 'Run' again. View the result
Identifying bad sectors with Disk Drill
Sectors are blocks of space on a disk drive and bad sectors are blocks that cannot be read because, for whatever reason, they're damaged. When Disk Drill attempts to recover data from a hard drive that's failed or one where you've mistakenly deleted files, it marks sectors it can't read from as bad. That means that it won't try to recover data from them in the future.
You can't fix bad sectors, the drive's firmware should identify them and prevent them from being written to. If there's data stored in them and you need to recover it, you're out of luck. But by monitoring how many of them there are on a drive, you can keep an eye on its health and decide whether it's time to replace it, if the number of bad sector starts to increase quickly.
Here's how to identify bad sector in Disk Drill:
- Open Disk Drill app in Setapp. When it launches, it will ask if you want to 'Monitor my disks for hardware issues'. Say Yes. If you already have Disk Drill installed but didn't check that option when you launched it the first time, go to the Preferences, click the SMART tab and check the box next to 'Monitor my disks for hardware issues.'
- Start a recovery session. In Disk Drill's main window, select the volume 'Macintosh HD', or whatever you've called your Mac's hard drive. Click Recover. Let the recover session run and complete.
- Check bad sectors. Once the recovery session has completed and saved, go back to the main Disk Drill window. Click the gear icon next to the drive you ran the recovery session on and click the bottom item on the menu 'Specify bad blocks.' This tool is designed to allow you to tell Disk Drill which blocks are bad and you don't want it to scan, but it will also display bad sectors it has identified.
How to avoid problems from an unhealthy hard drive
You should always backup your hard drive regularly, but it's even more important to do it when you suspect your hard drive is having problems. If you identify problems with a hard drive using any of the steps above, you should consider increasing the frequency of your backups and test them to make sure you can recover data if you need to – a backup routine is useless if you can't restore data. You should also consider using Get BackUp Pro to make a complete clone of the drive, that way, in an emergency you can boot from the clone and be back up and running immediately. Click here to read about how to backup your Mac. Get Backup Pro, also available in Setapp, is an excellent tool for making regular backups.
How to recover from a failed hard drive
If it's already too late and your hard drive has failed and lost data, you should try to recover the data before you do anything else.
These might also interest you:
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
Read onSign Up