# Disk Tools: speed, health and a check for every drive > Test a drive’s speed, read its health, see its format with advice, and check it for damage without changing anything. Free, for any mounted drive. - URL: https://moreroom.app/support/disk-tools - Topic: Troubleshooting - Updated: 2026-10-17 - Publisher: MoreRoom (Yando Pte. Ltd.) — https://moreroom.app ## In short - Disk Tools is in the sidebar, under Overview. Choose any drive mounted on your Mac: the startup disk, an external drive, a USB stick or an SD card. - The speed test measures how fast the drive writes and reads, plus small random accesses, then says in plain words what the drive is fast enough for. - Health shows SMART status, wear and temperature when the drive reports them. Details gives the format with advice. The check looks for damage without changing anything. All free. ## How to test a drive’s speed with MoreRoom 1. **Open Disk Tools.** Click Disk Tools in the sidebar, under Overview. 2. **Choose the drive.** Click the drive at the top of the window. Each one shows its size and free space. 3. **Start the test.** Click Start Test. MoreRoom writes a temporary file, reads it back, then measures random reads and writes. You can click Stop at any time. 4. **Read the verdicts.** Under What this drive is good for, each use gets a check mark when the drive is fast enough, with a short reason. ## Open Disk Tools Click **Disk Tools** in the sidebar, under **Overview**. It doesn’t need a scan. At the top, every drive mounted on your Mac is listed with its size and free space: **Macintosh HD**, external SSDs and hard disks, USB sticks, SD cards, disk images and network volumes. Click one to choose it; the cards below then describe that drive. Disk Tools is free: no Pro badge, no limit. ## Speed Test Click **Start Test**. MoreRoom: 1. writes a temporary file to the drive in several passes, then reads it back, with caching turned off so the result is the drive’s own speed, not your Mac’s memory; 2. measures **random 4K** reads and writes (in IOPS, operations per second) — the small, scattered accesses that apps, libraries and virtual machines make; 3. deletes the temporary file. It’s always deleted afterwards. While it runs, two dials show the **Write** and **Read** speed in MB/s. At the end you see the random read and write figures and the size of the test file. Click **Stop** to end it early, or **Test Again** later. ### Reading the verdicts Under **What this drive is good for**, MoreRoom compares the results with what common uses need: **4K video editing**, **Photos / Lightroom libraries**, **AI models & simulators**, **Virtual machines**, **Time Machine backups** and **Archiving / cold storage**. - A check mark and **Fast enough** means the drive keeps up with that use. The measured speed is shown. - A cross and **Too slow** shows what was measured and what is needed. A drive that’s too slow for video editing can still be perfectly fine for backups or archives. ### Why it needs free space The test writes a real file to the drive, so it needs about **1.1 GB free**. Below that, **Start Test** stays dimmed: free some space on the drive first. A drive that can’t be written to — mounted read-only, for example — can’t be tested. Only the temporary file is written; nothing else on the drive is touched. ## Health The **Health** card gives an overall verdict — **Good**, **Needs attention**, **Failing** or **Not reported** — with the reasons when something is wrong. Depending on the drive, it shows: - **SMART status**: the drive’s own self-assessment (**Verified**, **Failing** or **Not supported**); - **Wear**, **Temperature**, **Data written** and **Powered on** hours, for drives that share them with macOS; - the **Model**, whether **TRIM** is on, and **Encryption**. ### “Not reported” on an external drive Many external drives don’t pass health data to macOS: USB adapters usually don’t forward SMART status, and some drives don’t share wear or temperature. MoreRoom then shows **Not reported**, with a short note explaining why. It doesn’t mean the drive has a problem — only that macOS can’t see its health. For a network volume, health can only be read on the server; for a disk image, it’s that of the drive holding the image file. ## Details The **Details** card shows the drive’s **Format** (APFS, Mac OS Extended, ExFAT…), **Capacity**, **Available** space, **Local snapshots**, whether it’s a **Time Machine** backup disk, and its **Device** name. Below, short advice appears when it matters, for example: - the drive is nearly full; - its format can’t store files over 4 GB, or isn’t suited to Time Machine; - it’s NTFS, which macOS can only read; - it’s an SSD that would work better as APFS; - it isn’t encrypted — Finder can encrypt it: Control-click the drive › **Encrypt**; - it’s case-sensitive, which some apps don’t support. ## Check this disk Click **Check**. MoreRoom reads the whole file system structure **without changing anything**, like the check Disk Utility’s First Aid runs. It can take a few minutes, and you can click **Stop**. The speed test and the check don’t run at the same time. - **No damage found.** Sometimes with “macOS noted minor issues it can live with”: there’s nothing to do. - **Problems found.** MoreRoom lists the first ones. It doesn’t repair anything itself: open **Disk Utility**, select the disk and click **First Aid**. - **Couldn’t be checked.** The reason is shown — for example the volume is in use, it’s a network volume, or the disk was disconnected. ## Good to know - Disk Tools never changes your files: the speed test only writes its own temporary file and deletes it, and the check is read-only. - To see what fills a drive, scan it: see [Scan your Mac](https://moreroom.app/support/scan-your-mac). - If MoreRoom’s free space differs from Finder’s, see [Why numbers differ](https://moreroom.app/support/numbers-differ). ## Related articles - [MoreRoom system requirements](https://moreroom.app/support/system-requirements.md) - [A scan seems slow or stuck](https://moreroom.app/support/scan-slow-or-stuck.md) - [Why MoreRoom’s numbers differ from Finder and System Settings](https://moreroom.app/support/numbers-differ.md) - [What’s in MoreRoom Free, and what Pro adds](https://moreroom.app/support/free-vs-pro.md) ## Still need help? Write to us: a real person reads every message and answers within 2 business days. https://moreroom.app/contact