February 2022 • Macworld 31Smartmontools provides a helpful
number of data points about your
Mac’s SSD. Kingston has a PDF that
explains the collected data points at
fave.co/3lFE6lf. For quick reference,
here are a few.
Available Spare: Percentage of the
remaining spare capacity available
for use.
Percentage Used: This is an estimate
of the amount of life used by the SSD.
Data Units Read/Data Units Written:
Pay attention to the bracketed
number in terabytes. The number in
front of that is the data presented as
512 byte data units.HOW TO USE
SMARTMONTOOLS
IN THE FUTURE
Here’s how to run smartmontools at
a later point, since it’s a good idea to
check on your SSD every once in a
while to make sure it’s in good health.
If you ran the installation noted above,
smartmontools will be on your Mac for
you to use whenever you want.- Launch Terminal and at the prompt,
type diskutil list and press
Return. This will show information on
the SSD in your Mac.
2. Look for the section
labelled /dev/
disk0 (internal).
Under the headers
(#, TYPE NAME,
SIZE, IDENTIFIERS),
copy and paste the
identifier of the entry
starting with 0. In my
situation, it’s disk0.
3. Go to the prompt
below, then type
smartctl -a, then a
space, and then paste
in the identifier. So,
for example, in my
The Smart Data Section is full of helpful stats. Keep an
eye on the Percentage Used number, because that tells
you the amount of life used by the SSD. The higher the
number, the shorter the life remaining.