Hard Disk Sentinel 3.00

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET staff on October 06, 2009

Hard Disk Sentinel monitors and tests the health of your computer's hard disks. Although casual users may find some of the information helpful, this tool is better left to those already familiar with the metrics associated with PC performance.

The application monitors hard disk activity and performance. To do so, it integrates information from disks that use Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART), which measures mechanical failures during such processes as seeking and spin-up/spin-down. Hard Disk Sentinel also provides several tests to run through these processes. Errors are logged, and you can save or e-mail reports. Registered users ($23 to buy) can set thresholds for various criteria; when hit, the application can sound an alarm and back up or shut down the disk. Those who opt for the Professional version ($35) can have alerts sent by e-mail as well as schedule automated backups, among other features.

Although Hard Disk Sentinel will not win any design awards, its interface is easily understood. Numerous tooltips help acquaint you with the application, while an impressive Help file provides thorough and informative descriptions of virtually every aspect of the program. The application could use a bit of tightening here and there; when we ran tests, for example, they completed successfully, but the program offered no report or diagnosis. Hard Disk Sentinel provides a great deal of information--probably much more than most people will ever need or want to see. It is a great way to get a snapshot of the health of your hard disks and to estimate the chances of a future failure.

Publisher's description

From H.D.S. Hungary :

Hard Disk Sentinel monitors hard disk status, health and performance including temperature and S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, built in most hard disks today) values for each hard disks. Also it measures the hard disk transfer speed in real time which can be used as a benchmark or to detect possible hard disk failures, performance degradations. Hard Disk Sentinel can be used to prevent serious damage or data loss.

It warns the user before a problem may occur and this gives opportunity to backup important and valuable data. The Professional version has options to backup data periodically or when a problem is found. Version 2 new user interface, full detailed text description about hard disk status, reporting features, detailed logging and graph displays, context-sensitive help system, periodic and panic backup.

New in this version: Now includes random seek test function. Also has detection of disks configured to RAID arrays on ARECA RAID controllers.

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