Spot potential problems before they result in an irrecoverable data loss
I use this, pretty good (IMHO)
Hard Disk Sentinel Standard 5.50 Free @ Giveaway of The Day
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Transparent on 26/05/2020 - 08:32 giveawayoftheday.com (3597 clicks)
Last edited 26/05/2020 - 10:38 by 2 other users
Last edited 26/05/2020 - 10:38 by 2 other users
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IMO yes. I def prefer it though I've only tried crystaldisk free. The stats they read off are the same HDD sentinel just has better sector scans & transfers weak sectors to other sectors if the integrity check fails. Both only store bad sectors at a OS level instead of on the drive but still very useful when your HDD or data cable starts going faulty.
Never heard of this site so I did it a quick google and it seems pretty shady. Anyone had a good experience using it recently?
Well these direct links from the last giveaway deal appear to work so that solves your problem. Site was bitsdujour
http://download.bitsdujour.com/bdj/downloads/2020/hdsentinel…
https://bitsdujourblob.blob.core.windows.net/bdj/downloads/2…
First link dosn't work, it says " this version of Hard disk sentinel is expired, installation is not possible."
You can still install it just change the computer clock back to mid March.
@superforever: Man, that still works? That's how I used to "renew" my antivirus license back in the day. :)
It's a legit site. I downloaded a few freebies before. No dramas.
Found the site owner!
Source(s): just trust me bro
Great piece of software, it has saved me from losing data many times by allowing me to backup the data before the problem got worse.
Good software for attempting repairs on hard disks- can reinitialise sectors and force the disks to correct bad data. Surprisingly hard to find software that can do this
With good reason.
"repairing" bad sectors is not something that can be done via software like this, and repeatedly forcing a disk to attempt to read bad sectors very often causes further damage and has a miniscule chance of actually recovering data - especially for users who don't know what they are doing (which is going to be 99% of people attempting this).
That's fair to say and I'm not clear on the specifics but most of my hard disks have spare sectors. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that once the hard disk knows the sector is bad, it can try to avoid it and instead use one of the spare sectors. Provided there are enough spare sectors available, the hard disk can be utilised to 100% capacity again.
Recovering data on the other hand I agree- no luck. But just want to be able to use my hard disk again, without having the risk of every new file end up partially corrupted and for that purpose it has worked.
You are correct.
Also recovering data can definitely happen.
The software runs a disc scan and marks unreadable sectors as "bad". What that means is any further disk reads will skip marked sectors.
Spinrite is what I use before to recover data with very bad condition hard disk.
Your explanation is not the greatest.
Hard drives can repair or skip over bad sectors automatically which means your data is automatically recovered, or your data is damaged but future writes will work fine.
Attempting to read bad sectors is not going to cause further damage unless there is a proper fault with the hard drive, one bad sector does not mean that.
Sometimes bad sectors can be the sign of more to come, sometimes they will keep going for years and years without additional bad sectors.
For me it's been a few times that a HDD was clearly faulty but the software would show that the drive is healthy…I wouldn't trust it too much.
I've had the opposite. Other software showed it was fine. Only this showed it failing.
I assumed the other software was right.
Then it died
It's saying my Hard Drive health is 98%, so what is the problem with 2%? How can I know what the problem is?
It should tell you.
Most likely you have a SSD. It just means the number of hours you have been running the SSD. This is usually a common reason why a SSD would show less than 100%.
Thank you for explanation. :) Yeah, mine is SSD 1TB
No, it's the total amount of data that has been written to. It's calculated by the right Cycles so the total maybe 300tb and how ever much of that. It will tell you how many gigabytes has been written.
@mckayver: Yes that's what I meant. It's the amount of data written on the disk. I accidentally written hours.
% may be based on MTBF. So if your disk has been online for a period or it has performed a lot of writes, they estimate a liveliness percentage to match manufacturer's claims.
From their docs:
The hard disk has 100% condition initially. All critical health-rated S.M.A.R.T. parameters (if they are available, it depends on the manufacturer) decrease this value. These attributes have a pre-defined weight and a maximum limit value (the latter defines the maximum degradation in health value for the attribute). The overall health percent value is calculated by multiplying the remaining percent values (100 - degradation %).ie. I have a disk that has survived 14 years, its current 'health' is 70%
Thank you for explanation. :)
Highly recommend checking out the user guides https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_how_to_start.php
HD Sentinel can be pretty confusing for novices & first time users.
I use HDD Sentinel pro every day at work, and in my experience there are 2 main causes for HD Sentinel displaying a drive health of <100%
The drive is an SSD. HD Sentinel is NOT a reliable diagnostic tool for SSD's. Yes, it will probably recognize the SSD and display some useful health data, but it is absolutely not to be seen as a reliable tool for diagnosing SSD faults. For SSD's, manufacturer software/diagnostics tools should be used.
The HDD (physical Hard disk drive) has a significant physical fault. Even at 98% health it can be a serious mechanical fault. The drive health % is somewhat misleading in this regard. A HDD reporting 98% health in HD Sentinel can have 1 bad sector and be performing perfectly well, but you can also have a 98% health HDD with a significant physical fault that will not even be detected by Windows.
Thank you guys. @samfisher5986 @TomGum @turtlesinmypants @shawnmaggot
This is how it looks: https://imgur.com/a/ndh12BX
Ok cool it's an SSD.
Ignore the HD Sentinel health in that case. Download and run the manufacturers SSD utility/diagnostic software.
So I don't really need this software?
@Taron: Not unless you write huge amounts of data every day and you want to monitor the health of your SSD.
For example if you used your SSD to record security footage or to download all your TV Shows/Movies in 4k on a regular basis.
Either way if its a decent SSD it will take years to get to a bad point, even if you copy a lot of data.
Current version is 5.61.2 (5 May 2020) and their web site is https://www.hdsentinel.com/. If your hard disk gets hot, it can be configured to shutdown your system.
Hard Disk Sentinel (HDSentinel) is a multi-OS SSD and HDD monitoring and analysis software. 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 and in external enclosures (USB hard disks / e-SATA hard disks). Many different alerts and report options are available to ensure maximum safety of your valuable data.
No need to use separate tools to verify internal hard disks, external hard disks, SSDs, hybrid disk drives (SSHD), disks in RAID arrays and Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives as these are all included in a single software. In addition Hard Disk Sentinel Pro detects and displays status and S.M.A.R.T. information about LTO tape drives and appropriate industrial (micro) SD cards and eMMC devices too. See the How to: monitor Network Attached Storage (NAS) status for information about hard disk monitoring in Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.
Hard Disk Sentinel monitors hard disk drive / HDD status including health, temperature and all S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) values for all hard 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.
thanks. +1 for this software - use it already
Is it only for Windows? I never used any 3rd party hard disk software on Mac
Windows only -
Windows 95/ 98/ 98 SE/ ME/ NT4/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ 2008/ Vista/ 7/ Home Server/ 2012/ 8/ 8.1/ 10
Does this monitor SSD or only HDD?
seems SSD has less issue than HDD as it doesn't have moving parts and less issue of overheating?Yes, it does monitor SSD, but older versions won't necessarily support newer drives.
SSD can and do fail unfortunately, but generally for different reasons to HDD.
It monitors both.
SSDs don't necessary have less issues. This software does rate the SSD health reasonably well if the manufacturers provide detailed information on the SSDs (which manufacturers nowadays tend to withhold more information because those data will potentially result in this app rates the SSD lower).
This app helps, but it is not consistent enough. Assuming the SSD does provide enough information, this app will lower the health % consistently on SSD (for example if there were sector reallocations and/or wear level changes). The same, however, cannot be said on HDD as the health level tends to be based on number of sector reallocation.
What you actually want to see is SSD's health level dropping as time goes on. You also want to see the same for HDD. The question is at what % of health would you consider changing the SSD / HDD? I have an SSD which is rated at 68% health despite no sector reallocation yet (it is mainly due to wear level rating, it is marked down heavily). So, the app is indicating the flash cell quality is degrading on that SSD. I still use that SSD, but for ah-hoc / test / experimental OS drive.
I got HD Sentinel for free some time ago from a similar give away.
Recently, I ended up purchasing a full family license so that I had access to the latest version.
For me, it's not about preventing data loss - I've got everything important backed up on multiple media and for the really important stuff, also off site. The key benefit for me is to have advance warning that a drive is dying and allow me time to replace it before it causes downtime.
i like your logic.
Didn't realise I was on 4.71. Time to update!
Running a test on a 4TB NAS HDD with ETA of 800 hours hah(displaying 4% Health Critical) - just started a few hours ago.
12176 bad sectors moved to the spare area
Drive found 61144 bad sectors during its self test
61144 weak sectors found on disk surfaceAll movies/TV shows were lost so not too fussed.
I've reformat the drive, copying some dummy files on it see how it holds up.
This software atleast gives you a heads up on your drives thumbs up
Mine's on 2% critical health with an estimated 2 day remaining lifetime. Does reformatting generally improve hard drive health?
Not so much no but I did anyway as I plan to use it just to store and watch TV shows (knowing it may or may not get worse or get more bad sectors).
If it goes kaput again then no fuss, no sensitive data there.
404 for me
weird i tried using different browser n it still worked… try copying link location and pasting it into address bar
404 for me also.
so there is no serial required after install?
UPDATE: Just installed and the readme file said no key requierd (pre-activated). Just need to install before the promo finishes!
just change the date in windows to activate after. works i did it for the last freebee.
If anyone is brave enough to trust a random person on OzBargain, I have uploaded the unaltered setup file here so you don't need to give out your email address. No need for a serial number, the program comes pre-activated.
The link will expire in 48 hours from now.VirusTotal link:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/0656b45deb5ef991e8f752b559ac9a45bf4321df82ef92dfe2631e1c7df54958
MD5 5baefd338a38c21517c435a4b1ecaaff SHA-1 fbf58791d684e53199f707b69b8f7cc9d15f0fed SHA-256 0656b45deb5ef991e8f752b559ac9a45bf4321df82ef92dfe2631e1c7df54958I put my trust in you. Thanks!
Can someone please explain why it does not read external HDs?
I would like to knowI had it for months (previous deals) - and it sure does read external HDDs (via USB)
Reads my external enclosure with a removable HDD inside perfectly.
Depends on your enclosure and how cheap/dodgy it is, it might not report S.M.A.R.T. or other info and just treat it as a USB flash drive.
I reckon that's your case?Well, they are a normal 'my book' 5TB from WD, a 4TB Seagate, and a 2TB Seagate originals I must say in their enclosure
Nothing dodgy/cheap I thinkThat's a bit weird. I have a cheap $3 enclosure I got from AliExpress ~7 years ago, that one is not detected on Hard Disk Sentinel, but my $10 Chinese brand enclosure gets detected perfectly. Just my experience.
Have 4 external drives connected vua USB - some direct, some on a hub, (including one very sick HD - health 4%) and HD Sent ver 5.5 reads them all. Mixed cases, Seagate WD and Astone…thought the SMART hardware was in/on the HDD board?
Is that a work laptop or personal laptop / desktop?
Maybe try running the program in Administrator mode.
Hard Disk Sentinel Standard 5.50 was available as a giveaway on May 25, 2020!
Not to be a Debbie Downer… but:
"Spot potential problems before they result in an irrecoverable data loss."
…isn't this why we do backups in the first place? Hello Karen!
I know the freebie has expired but does anyone have a suggestion on buying standard or pro (there's always 40% off coupons on Google) if I just want to check an external drive before shucking?
Better than Crystaldisk?