Hard Disk Sentinel

Hard Disk Sentinel is a monitoring and analysis suite for HDDs and SSDs.

Disk drives are still integral to the way that most people use computers. They store all of your most important information, and you should they fail, that data can be lost. In addition, if their performance is not optimal, then that affects the overall speed and reliability of your system.

Hard Disk Sentinel—which is stylized HDSentinel—is an application that lets you monitor disk drives and analyze the data collected about those drives. The program can analyze in real-time as well as analyzed data that has been collected over a long period.

HDSentinel is a multi-OS program. This means that with a single software license, you have access to many different iterations of the program. Mac OS is not supported, but Linux and most of its derivatives are. Windows support begins at Windows 98—so no 3.1 or 95—and covers every version of the operating system ever made all the way up to the current Windows 10.

The program monitors mechanical hard disk drives—HDDs—and solid-state drives—SSDs—as well as hybrid drives. It can monitor multiple drives concurrently. This includes internal standalone drives, internal drives in a RAID array, external RAID arrays and external standalone disks. Drive interface support is comprehensive too and includes IDA, SATA, eSATA, SCSI, SAS, USB and much more.

HDSentinel is intended to start with the operating system and run in the background. As it runs, it can provide you with in-depth and textual information about the various aspects of your drive. Its goal is to find inconsistencies, diagnose them and repair them automatically. In cases where it cannot repair automatically, it will provide you tips on how to proceed.

The program also reports on drive health, performance degradation and failures. The goal here is to warn you of an impending failure long before it happens so that you can act in advance. It displays temperature, health based on performance and health based on S.M.A.R.T. Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology is implemented by most modern drives in order to provide health information to the operating system and programs like Hard Disk Sentinel.

HDSentinel is an excellent tool to extend drive life and to replace drives before they fail. The version provided here is a trial version. This trial is not time-sensitive. You can use it as much as you like to determine if the program is appropriate for you. However, many advanced features are not included in the trial, and there is no way to test those without upgrading to the licensed version.

Pros

• Disk monitoring and analysis
• Works with HDDs and SSDs
• Supports multiple operating systems

Cons

• Trial version