I was about to buy Drive Scope (on my iMac, I have a Solid-state Drive). I was about to enter my credit card information, but STOP:

I did _not_ see that the page was Secure. So I stopped post-haste thinking, "Whew!"

What should I do, please? Thank you.

I do not understand why you would not have a secure connection. The browser may not show a tiny lock at the beginning of the URL, but the URL itself should begin with h t t p s : / /, the "s" representing a secure connection.

Your concern is not misplaced. I ordered a sweater from a firm in Belgium last January. I did not notice that the connection was not secure. Three days later, my credit card was used in two stores about three thousand miles away.

You wrote, "I do not understand why you would not have a secure connection." Well, ...

N E I T H E R D O I !

Hello, micromattech3? You may Rest-assured that I safely got iDrive Scope (Full version). All it took was to use Firefox as my browser, rather-than Safari.

But as its Status, I see: "Aborted by host 10%": _not_ once, but _5_ times. More later? Still, I like the products of Micromat. Thank you.

Thanks for letting us know that Firefox gave you a secure connection, and for the error messages, which I have forwarded to a colleague who works with the Website.

I have found that if the computer goes to sleep the Extended Offline Self Test will abort. My problem is that my test counted down all 3 hrs 41 min and reached 00:00:00 with the test showing 90% complete and refusing to finish the test.

Thanks for your interesting observation, which I have forwarded to the beta administrator for Drive Scope. I would have assumed that the running of the test would prevent the computer from going to sleep.

All I can suggest now is that before starting the test, you use the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences to prevent the computer from going to sleep.

That is precisely what I did. The reason the program hung up at the 90% point is that it encountered a read error. I also found out that in order to have the drive properly reported as being defective you need to go up to the Drives Menu and select Update SMART info (command-U). Then and only then will the recent data from the Extended offline self test be updated. Now I must go and get a new hard drive.

Thanks for the additional details.

I would like to see a screen capture of the SMART Attributes screen for your drive:

Attached you will find 3 screen shots,
The first is the Information screen which did not update to a Warning on Health until after Drives-Update SMART Info was selected. The ATA Error Count was at 1,102 from the very first time I ran the software. After the Quick Self Test the Health indicator was a green dot.

The second is Self Test Page after the Extended Self Test Completed. Note the two aborted tests due to the computer going to sleep.

The third is the Attributes Page after the Drives-Update SMART Info was selected. According to your documentation this is a fatal error.
John Keller

Thanks for your efforts.

Only the first of the screen captures came through. This may be a new problem. Today, I had to edit my own postings to add another screen capture.

Please submit the other two screen captures, one to a message. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

The data shown by Drive Scope does not update in real time. For example, if you look at the drive temperature in the Information window, that temperature reading does not update until you use Update SMART Info in the Drives menu, or type Command U.

You can see in this posting how my drive had 8 pending sectors (shown by Drive Scope) and 8 unremapped bad blocks detected by TechTool Pro, and ultimately, the drive itself resolved the situation. Later, TechTool Pro and Drive Scope agreed about the current state of the drive. The 8 pending sectors were caused by an improper shutdown of my iMac. I do not think that will happen in your case:

How many bad sectors is reasonable before a drive should be replaced?

It would be interesting to see the results of the Surface Scan, if you have TechTool Pro.

For the benefit of others, here is the description of S.M.A.R.T. attribute 197 from the Drive Scope manual (page 33):

Attribute 197 - Current Pending Sectors Count
Lower Raw Value is better - Critical Attribute

This attribute is the current count of unstable blocks waiting to be remapped. If a sector marked for remapping is subsequently written or read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped to the reserve sector table. Remapping will only occur on a failed write attempt and if a spare sector is available, while failed reads do not cause remapping. After remapping a sector, the raw value will be decreased and reallocated sector count will be increased. See SMART attribute 5 increases in reallocated sectors.
WARNING: If a failure is reported for this attribute, backup the data immediately and consider replacing the device as soon as possible.

This is one of the two remaining screen shots

This is the first of the two remaining screen shots. This time I will hit the attach button first.

This is the second of the two remaining screen shots

Thanks for the screen captures, and for your other detailed comments. Drive Scope is new, and learning to support a new program goes better when customers provide clear, detailed descriptions and good screen captures.

I hope you will be able to replace the drive without a lot of difficulty.

Glad to help out. Replacing hard drive in a 2009 Mac Pro os beyond easy, it is just the $$$ and restoring the data. ;^)

Thanks again for you cooperation, and it is a pleasure to learn that you will not be ordering a kit with a new drive, a collection of tools, and some suction cups for removing an iMac screen.

The aborting of the self-test when an error is encountered is intentional. The error is then reported in the Self-Test Status column in Drive Scope. The drive itself sends the command to halt the self-test when an error is encountered.

I have suggested that this fact be added to the manual.

I just realized how handy it would have been to have had the Short Offline Test when my HGST drive developed 8 pending sectors, because the test checks the pending sectors for read errors.

So I bought Tech Tool because I got the discount for buying Drive Scope. A little beyond half way through surface scan it started finding all the blocks bad so I cancelled the test. See the attached pdf.

PS The Preview button next to Submit does not seem to work.

Some day, perhaps when a new filesystem is not looming, the malfunctioning Preview button will rise to the top of the to-do list. I hope it is not months from now.

Thanks for the pdf of the Surface Scan test results, showing the detection of 716 unremapped bad blocks. If the drive were still under warranty, the screen capture would be good evidence to show that the drive had failed.