#Michael Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 My 2011 mac mini has been acting up lately (i.e. not rebooting correctly and generally being a PITA). I did a repair permissions and verify disk and also did a smart test. But I am confused by the results. What does the remaining percentage mean? Is the hard drive almost dead? === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member Posted April 23, 2014 Member Share Posted April 23, 2014 Remaining is a separate column from "Life Time (hours)" -- 00% means the test finished. Above you didn't list what the lifetime hours left were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#Michael Posted April 23, 2014 Author Share Posted April 23, 2014 Remaining is a separate column from "Life Time (hours)" -- 00% means the test finished. Above you didn't list what the lifetime hours left were. The lifetime hours left 18634. Not sure why that wasn't included. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member Posted April 23, 2014 Member Share Posted April 23, 2014 ^ Ah, well the test isn't indicating there is anything wrong your drive then and the remaining column isn't saying you drive is dead. That doesn't necessarily mean the drive is good though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikh Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 OP: If you can take it into the apple store. They have more detailed hard drive diagnostics that will tell you if the drive is bad. Sadly, SMART isnt always right about hard drive failures. Ive not only seen it myself, but constantly I see people online go "hey my hard drive died but the smart status was good when this problem first came up". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srbeen Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 You're not showing an error though and I think the percentage likely counts down from 100% to 00% when its finished (or the 1 got cut off). To me it sounds like a RAM issue, but macs are strange. have you ran MEMtest86+ or the mac-equivalent of it, preferably overnight? you should be able to make a linux boot disk from a distro like ubuntu and boot right up to the memtest program by holding the 'apple' key when powering up until it chimes/keyboard comes awake. (hold too long it won't start booting) Also I find SMART tests most effective when the HDD in question isn't the one hosting the test. Run it from the boot media-->terminal or a separate ram-loaded OS like ubuntu. This way you can do a full SMART test, which takes some time but verifies the HDD sectors as well as the other main functions. SMART only boils down to how well the vendor (probably hitachi) implemented it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#Michael Posted April 23, 2014 Author Share Posted April 23, 2014 OP: If you can take it into the apple store. They have more detailed hard drive diagnostics that will tell you if the drive is bad. Sadly, SMART isnt always right about hard drive failures. Ive not only seen it myself, but constantly I see people online go "hey my hard drive died but the smart status was good when this problem first came up". I don't have applecare on it so taking it to my local store won't do anything for me. I might try swapping the drive out for a new ssd and see if that works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#Michael Posted April 23, 2014 Author Share Posted April 23, 2014 You're not showing an error though and I think the percentage likely counts down from 100% to 00% when its finished (or the 1 got cut off). To me it sounds like a RAM issue, but macs are strange. have you ran MEMtest86+ or the mac-equivalent of it, preferably overnight? you should be able to make a linux boot disk from a distro like ubuntu and boot right up to the memtest program by holding the 'apple' key when powering up until it chimes/keyboard comes awake. (hold too long it won't start booting) Also I find SMART tests most effective when the HDD in question isn't the one hosting the test. Run it from the boot media-->terminal or a separate ram-loaded OS like ubuntu. This way you can do a full SMART test, which takes some time but verifies the HDD sectors as well as the other main functions. SMART only boils down to how well the vendor (probably hitachi) implemented it though. OS X has built in ram test tools. You just have to press option+d after the start chime to go into the test tools. I'll run some tests and see srbeen 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian M. Veteran Posted April 23, 2014 Veteran Share Posted April 23, 2014 I don't have applecare on it so taking it to my local store won't do anything for me. I might try swapping the drive out for a new ssd and see if that works. They won't charge you to test it at the genius bar. Alternatively, give Smart Utility a try. It makes reading that stuff much easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikh Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 I don't have applecare on it so taking it to my local store won't do anything for me. I might try swapping the drive out for a new ssd and see if that works. What? What gives you this idea? The genius bar is completely free. Also they would NEVER recommend you go with them for a hard drive replacement in a mac mini. Hell ive seen the GB tell people "you know its easy as pulled the wireless atenna crowling off and pulling the drive out.... *hint hint nudge nudge*. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#Michael Posted April 26, 2014 Author Share Posted April 26, 2014 I used smart utility as recommended and it also found no errors with the hard drive. I also ran ram tests and after 2 passes no errors were found. I am stumped as to what is causing this. The only think I can think of is that the drive is encrypted with filevault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srbeen Posted April 27, 2014 Share Posted April 27, 2014 I used smart utility as recommended and it also found no errors with the hard drive. I also ran ram tests and after 2 passes no errors were found. I am stumped as to what is causing this. The only think I can think of is that the drive is encrypted with filevault. Yeah if its not the hardware it must be a software issue. Something hanging in the background, bad/corrupted kexts can probably do it too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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