Hard Disk Sentinel (standard)

Hard Disk Sentinel (standard) overview

Hard Disk Sentinel (HDSentinel) is a hard disk monitoring software with highest possible support of HDD/SSD/SSHD (hybrid) drives. Its goal is to find, test, diagnose and repair hard disk drive problems, report and display SSD and HDD health, performance degradations and failures. Hard Disk Sentinel gives complete textual description, tips and displays/reports the most comprehensive information about the hard disks and solid state disks inside the computer or in external enclosures (USB / e-SATA). Many different alerts and report options are available to ensure maximum safety of your valuable data.

 

The software monitors hard disk drive / HDD status, including health, temperature and all S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, built in most hard disks, solid state disks and hybrid drives (SSHD) today) values for each disks. Also it measures the disk transfer speed in real time which can be used as a benchmark or to detect possible hard disk failures, performance degradations.

 

Quote from review written by FIBERdownload.com Editorial team where Hard Disk Sentinel received Editor's choice award:

     

"The price of one 1.000 GB HDD 130 USD

The price of your work saved files - hundreds or, maybe, thousands of hours

A solution to guard all this stuff : PRICELESS

 

This is the way I would describe Hard Disk Sentinel after some days of intensive testing.

 

Capable of monitoring fixed or portable hard disk drives ( USB ), Hard Disk Sentinel tests, finds and repairs errors and failures that might appear. It is the perfect data protection solution that complete its tasks in real time..."

 

HDSentinel is the perfect data protection solution: it can be effectively used to prevent HDD failure and SSD / HDD data loss because it has the most sensitive hard disk health rating system which is extremely sensitive to hard disk problems. This way even a small HDD problem can't be missed. The Professional version has scheduled and automatic (on-problem) hard disk backup options to prevent data loss caused by not only failure but by malware or accidental delete also.

 

Features of Hard Disk Sentinel (standard)

Easy to use interface

All information are displayed in the main window of the application. Quick controls allow easy navigation to access all hard disks, partitions and different information. Intuitive user interface elements display information by using green/yellow/red color to indicate the level of problem. Detailed text description and context sensitive help guides the user thru the features and options.

 

1. Install > 2. Configure > 3. Stay protected

Just install, configure alerts and your system is now safe. You'll be notified about the problems - but if everything is correct, Hard Disk Sentinel just sits on tray and displays current status. The data is protected 24 hours daily, 7 days a week.

 

Instant S.M.A.R.T. analysing

Hard Disk Sentinel can communicate with all IDE, Serial ATA, NVMe, SCSI, SAS and most USB hard disk drives, SSD and hybrid drives (SSHD) to detect their status and temperature. Hard disk status are displayed immediately as you launch the application, there is no need to analyse hard disks for a long period. It displays the current and maximum temperature for the hard disk. It reads all general and vendor-specific attributes and monitor their values. For advanced users, all raw data are displayed also including power-on time and number of read/write errors. Hard Disk Sentinel interprets the performance and fitness related S.M.A.R.T. values and displays the calculated Performance and Health percentage, total power on time and estimated lifetime remaining.

 

Hard Disk Hardware and Software Tests

By using Hard Disk Sentinel, it is possible to start hardware hard disk self tests. These tests can be used to effectively find all hard disk problems because built-in hardware methods are used to verify hard disk components (for example heads, servo, internal buffer in the Short self test). The Extended self test also verifies the complete hard disk surface, finds and repairs all weak areas and re-allocates the possible bad sectors. This is not possible with the software-based hard disk surface scan methods (for example, by using scandisk).

 

Seek Noise Test

Seek Test - to verify hard disk noise, seek time performance and temperature. Longer tests can be used as very deep and intensive stress-tests for the hard disk and verify if additional cooling is required.

 

Logging

Hard Disk Sentinel logs all degradations in all SMART parameters and issues alerts in such cases to maximise data protection. For example, if a new bad sector is found on your hard disk, you will be notified.

 

Alerts

Hard Disk Sentinel has wide range of alerts upon different problems. It can send e-mail (with e-mail->SMS gateway it can be SMS warning to your mobile), network message, can play sound alerts and so.There is an option to send daily emails about current status.

 

Shutdown

Offers option to shut down the computer on hard disk failure, HDD overheat or health degradation. This option can be used in combination of the alerts to prevent further data loss.

 

Hard Disk Details

Detects and displays every information about the hard disk, from the revision number and buffer size to all features it has. The maximum available and current transfer modes are also displayed.

 

HDD status in Windows Explorer

View the current health status and used space in Windows Explorer or in any other application, so you'll always know the amount of used space for each partitions and the hard disk drive condition.

Information on demand

Current hard disk temperatures and health are displyed on the system tray and can be displayed in a small status window, the desktop itself or in a sidebar gadget (under Windows Vista or newer operating system). Average and maximum temperatures are logged for all hard disks and these informations are displayed in graphs for statistical purposes.

 

Hard Disk Performance

Logs how much data were read from or written to the hard disk. Displays current transfer rates for both reading and writing and estimates the maximum available (theoretical) transfer rate for a particular hard disk.

 

Hard Disk Partitions

Displays partitions for each physical hard disks and type and usage informations about them so you cannot run out of space. Hard Disk Sentinel sends this information automatically in alert/status messages.

 

Acoustic Management

Offers option to control the acoustic level of IDE/S-ATA hard disk. It is possible to increase performance or make the hard disk drives more silent. Unique feature: control the acoustic level of your external USB hard disk (if your USB enclosure is equipped with one of the proper USB-ATA bridge chips which supports this feature).

 

Clock Synchronization

It offers option to synchronize the PC clock with an atomic clock via NTP (Network Time Protocol).

 

Improvements

Hard Disk Sentinel is constantly improving. More features will be available soon.If you have any idea which can be useful, just let us know.

 

Hard Disk Sentinel software system requirements

Hardware Requirements

·Pentium or compatible CPU

·64 megabytes of system memory

·50 megabytes of hard disk space

·One or more hard disk, solid state disk, hybrid drive (SSHD) with ATA (IDE or Serial ATA/SATA II/SATA 6G), SCSI, SAS, USB, NVMe M.2 interface.

See Hardware compatibility pages for supported hard disk drives, SSD models, disk and RAID controllers and external hard disks / enclosures / adapters.

Network Attached Storage (NAS) disks can be monitored by extension of NAS functionality (see: How to: monitor Network Attached Storage (NAS) status for more information). USB/IEEE 1394 (firewire) enclosures are generally supported, but some (depending on firmware) may not provide complete status information.

Software Requirements

·Windows operating system: Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Home Server, Windows 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 both 32 and 64 bit versions (where applicable)

·System administrator account (in service mode, it is possible to use without administrator rights and in service mode, works even without user logged in)

 

No additional third party packages required: Hard Disk Sentinel does NOT require .NET framework, Java, Visual C/Visual Basic runtime package or similar, so it is ideal to install first after system installation for maximum protection. Hard Disk Sentinel can run in "safe mode" as well to allow hard disk testing / diagnostics when the system can't run in normal mode.

 

Note: hard disk controller drivers can also cause incompatibility problems and this case not all hard disk information may be displayed. For more information, please check the compatibility page and to download recommended drivers from the Driver Zone section.

 

The trial (unregistered) version can be used to verify compatibility and the level of status information could be retrieved.