It's worthwhile to install Hard Disk Sentinel & run it periodically to *maybe* detect problems early. It's important to note however that while detected problems are real, & something you should pay attention to, a clean [or relatively clean] bill of health from Hard Disk Sentinel doesn't really mean anything more than that it doesn't detect a problem -- Not that problems don't exist...

We have one drive that had/has become very slow for both read & write operations, so it was pulled from duty as a system drive & is now used for a redundant copy of backup archives. Hard Disk Sentinel gave & gives it passing marks.

I had a drive fail last year... Problems 1st surfaced with files copied to it sometimes being corrupted & useless. It progressively got worse until it was a race to get anything salvageable copied off the drive before it died completely [didn't make it but came pretty close]. Before, during, & *after*, Hard Disk Sentinel indicated it was fine.

Now while in those two cases HDS was no help at all, at other times it has helped by detecting a drive that was starting to go bad. It's also useful to check the S.M.A.R.T. data from external drives -- USB 3.0 seems to have all but killed off PC eSATA support, meaning that among other things you can't get real time temperature readings. S.M.A.R.T. data at least tells you if it has been getting too hot.

As far as HDS repairing drives, personally I tend to use software from the drive manufacturer, as running that software is usually a prerequisite for RMAing the drive [getting authorization to return it under warranty]. And the software from Western Digital for example may indeed repair it.

Backing up is also something I handle myself, though HDS Pro can do that for you if you prefer. The standard version can do benchmarks... In that regard I'm usually more concerned with SSDs, & their benchmark figures [for both advertising & comparison] are often the result of particular software run a certain way. A real world test like HDS offers will likely not match, so while it is useful, it might not tell you if an SSD is performing in spec.

Again, HDS is worthwhile -- the software has a good, solid track record -- but do take the claims made in its ad copy with a grain of salt. When it says: "... it can be effectively used to prevent HDD failure" it doesn't add in specific but limited circumstances, e.g. if a drive's overheating & you fix that.

mike  –  8 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+40)

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Setup both installs and registers the program; a clean and pleasing interface on opening.

The display presents in a clear manner a huge amount of data about your hard drive, much of which I am unfamiliar with but it looks like learning will be interesting.

The display of disk activity something that would have been a great help a few months ago when I was getting 100% disk activity. The cause was a combination of Skype and Flash which took a lot of time to understand as to why.

The one function I would have liked to have seen is information about which program using the disc and where it is reading and writing.

Looks like he could be useful when problems start to arise and so I'll be keeping it.

XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+38)

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Harry M
Thanks, but I prefer information presented graphically; when I had my problem one of the tools I used was SysResources Manager because of its graphical presentation of read and write hard drive operations.

Also used was "Activity Indicator" from:-
https://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/

Plus "What's my computer doing" from:-
http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/Whats-my-computer-doing.php?fromwmcd

Both the above are free and helped me find out which program was causing the problems; because of this was able to narrow it down to Flash and an update rectified the problem.

<b>Harry M</b> Thanks, but I prefer information presented graphically; when I had my problem one of the tools I used was SysResources Manager because of its graphical presentation of read and write hard drive operations. Also used was "Activity Indicator" from:- https://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/ Plus "What's my computer doing" from:- http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/Whats-my-computer-doing.php?fromwmcd Both the above are free and helped me find out which program was causing the problems; because of this was able to narrow it down to Flash and an update rectified the problem.
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XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+28)

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XP-Man
The Task Manager can display disk-usage info, by displaying the columns of I/O Reads and I/O writes. If this is not enough, the columns Page Faults and PF Delta can help find disk accesses arising from excessive memory usage. Process Explorer does it even better.

<b>XP-Man</b> The Task Manager can display disk-usage info, by displaying the columns of I/O Reads and I/O writes. If this is not enough, the columns Page Faults and PF Delta can help find disk accesses arising from excessive memory usage. Process Explorer does it even better.
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Harry M  –  8 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+25)

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This is a fine piece of Hard Disk monitoring software. It was installed in a Windows 7 x64 PC with no problems, which happens to be more than 1 year old.

If your laptop or PC is from 2015 to the present time, you might first want to check if your hardware is supported in the latest v4.71 version, as today's offer may not be for you.

The release notes for v4.7.1 is found here: http://www.hdsentinel.com/revision.php

While today's version is 4.60 and is from January 2015, it still offers a wealth of protection, especially for older systems that should be monitored more often.

Release notes for todays version can be found here: http://www.hdsentinel.com/revision460.php

Thanks GOTD and Hard Disk Sentinel for today's offer, a keeper for sure since my PC is old and slow.

arttronics  –  8 years ago  –  Vond je deze reactie nuttig? ja | nee (+24)

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