Latest free edition is live,
Hard Disk Sentinel Standard Edition 6.10 is up for free if anyone missed it,
Download and install before deal expiry or you can get 50% off lifetime upgrades if you want the latest for ever
If you install it on or after 30th of September 2024, the application will not be unlocked and you will need a registration key to unlock it.
See Comments for more info on install/expiry
What if you install it before 30 September but then format your computer and reinstall it later?
adjust pc clock and d.c from internet. sometimes works
That is a very old trick. I can't imagine any modern software would fall for it anymore but still worth a try.
thanks for the link, youre a legend
Download link not working for me
because theyve blocked ozbargain as a referrer. copy the link and paste into your address bar instead of clicking on it
lmao of course
just installed from your link and now lots of hot russian women want to date me
Secret bonus!
for some reason it brings up the antivirus alarms
Its downloading over HTTP not HTTPS but you can check the history its common for this website you can see https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/a299a0a1ebecb5b7f3d29c01b… if you are concerned (for the uploaded version https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/c2ed7571ba76c993c186d630…)
Highly recommended. This program has saved me from losing at least half a dozen disks. The family pack is definitely worth it now or on BF.
Janos who wrote it is a great guy and gives excellent support. Been using it for 10 years+
Great price for the Family Pack
Totally agree, it's a great app. I've been using it since 2013 (I upgraded to Professional family pack) and can also vouch for the excellent support provided. Highly recommended!
The Pro version also enables some surface scanning tests - surface reinitialise, sector repair etc
These can help identity and force the reallocation of failing sectors etc
Sometimes when the surface scan had identified a cluster of bad sectors on a big SMR HDD, I've been able to partition out those sectors, and keep using the HDD for non critical stuff, like this
https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_bad_sectors.php
Also, as mentioned the dev Janos is very knowledgeable, helpful and supportive. When I once emailed him about some odd results HDSentinel was showing for an Intel M2 SSD he replied back the next day with a patched version which fixed the issue.
Decent software, though I wouldn't have it set to run at all times. I have had issues with I think 5.50 in the past.
For a quick check on systems usually go for crystal disk info, although this provides more info.
Keeping in mind if you've got someone watching you download Crystal disk info, transfer it as opposed to downloading it on the machine.. If you know, you know.
Why wouldn’t you have it running in the task tray.?
You can change the polling from 10 mins to 30 mins or even 60 mins.
It doesn’t take a lot of resources and if you have a bunch of drives it can help you find the one by doing surface test. Also has some nice repair tools. I’ve worked with Janos on this program as beta testing and adding features.
One reason is it will keep hard disks that are normally parked after inactivity spinning, which will shorten their life. If you don't have a lot of RAM it will take up memory. It may also consume a little bit of power. I find it sufficient to run every once in a while.
normally parked after inactivity spinning, which will shorten their life.
The opposite is true - it's the regular spindown and spinup which shortens the drive life. You get better results just leaving the drive spinning.
@Nom: Moving parts degrade. The more they move, the more they degrade.
If I have a choice between a disk spinning up and down a couple of hundred times and being used a half dozen hours a day vs spinning 24x7 every day, I'll bet the wear on the continually spinning disks is higher.
Moving parts degrade. The more they move, the more they degrade.
Precisely.
When a drive is spinning but doing nothing, nothing is moving except the motor spindle on it's fluid bearing. The load on the motor is miniscule, the only thing taking wear is the fluid bearing on the spindle (which has an extremely long life).
When a drive is spinning up and down, the motor is under maximum load - it has to accelerate the platters from 0rpm to 5000-7000rpm, and the arm has to be shifted on/off the write surface, and then the head jumps around the platter doing it's post-spinup actions - these are all the things that make up the complex array of spin-up sounds. On top of all this, there's expansion and contraction happening to every part as time passes between the cooling-at-rest and heating-in-use - thermal cycling load is no joke.
There's way way more movement and load happening to way more things, in the spin up/down process, than there is in the no-load scenario of just keeping-spinning the already-up-to-speed platters.
@Nom: "When a drive is spinning but doing nothing, nothing is moving except the motor spindle on it's fluid bearing."
What are you on about? The whole platter is moving. Engineers have to be precise. You're conflating acceleration and motion in your explanation. You're confused. Wear on the moving parts of the drive does NOT require acceleration.
You've also ignored everything I said about manufacturers forcing their drives to park.
I don't know what your background is, but what you're saying is just flat out wrong.
What are you on about?
The age old subject of drive power cycling contributing to wear.
This subject has been covered to death for decades, I'm not sure why you're trying to start the debate on OzBargain in 2024.
You'll find people on both sides.
Here's some for and against threads from 2010 for you
https://superuser.com/questions/197862/how-harmful-is-a-hard…
https://superuser.com/questions/17228/is-turning-off-hard-di…
https://superuser.com/questions/1445404/is-it-safe-to-change…
and here's some more recent for and against
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/gyo48f/do_you_…
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6renrw/which_i…
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/dsy3me/keep_mechan…
In my significant experience, drive death usually happens during spin up. I'm firmly on the side of leaving them running.
Which is why I said so.
@Nom: I will at least give you that you provided both sides.
Here's the thing. I think for a data drive that gets occasional use (think drive with family photos added to once a month viewed maybe once or twice a week), spin up and down will be infrequent, whereas spinning for hours where it isn't used will cause a lot of wear. I've had drives that lived many years that fit that description.
It makes the tray messy, I have five drives in my computer.
I have had issues with it and some other monitoring programs, admittedly it was some time ago and I've not had an issue since either.
I just like a clean tray, I don't like keeping things running in the background. It is great software, I do like it but I personally wouldn't (and don't) run it all the time.
Windows allows you to customize exactly which icons appear on the tray.
Also, lots of things are running in the background that don't appear in the tray :) You can see these in Start -> Services
@fredblogs: Hard Disk Sentinel itself allows you to customize to avoid what Matt86 is complaining about.
The settings he wants are:
Configuration -> Preferences -> Hard Disk Drives -> Display only the highest temperature on the tray
Configuration -> Preferences -> Hard Disk Drives -> Display total disk activity on a single tray icon
Configuration -> Preferences -> Thresholds / Tray Icon -> Display hard disk temperature on tray icon
There are still other reasons not to run it continually.
Would this have a tool to help with 3.5 not showing up in device manager or disk management?
Or do i need a hammer for that probelm?
I had used a 2 bay clone drive as a plug and play for data transfers onto some internal drives. The first drive stopped working after a while, and like an idiot i put two other drives at a later date and bam 14+ TB gone…
No. This tool only informs you, does not fix anything.
it show you the health of your drives, it saved me a king size headache last time.It warn me 3months+ that one of my drive will die soon, and soon it did. https://prnt.sc/fwdx_niCr-bW
I just took the plunge and paid for family edition to support the good work (and thank them for the free version that I have used for years). Guess what? I clicked on the link they sent me through email "Too Many Downloads: This promotion has been downloaded too many times from this link. You can get this download by making a purchase from this page." WTF
Same. I paid for professional version with lifetime upgrades and just got the "too may downloads" response when trying to download for first time.
Have used their messaging system to contact them but no reply so far. Will give them a day to sort it out otherwise just ask Paypal for a refund.
What does it do?
It sentinels hard disks…
Have you ever suffered through the pain and agony of a hard drive failure? To you, it's pretty straightforward — one day your computer is humming along smoothly, and the next day it won't boot at all. But what you may not know is that, beyond the capabilities of your human senses, a whole host of little warning signs and other signals can actually tell you when hard drive failure is imminent! That's why Hard Disk Sentinel is so important.
Hard Disk Sentinel monitors and analyzes your hard disk and solid state drives, giving you valuable feedback on the health of the drive, any performance degradations, and warning of impending failure. With Hard Disk Sentinel, you'll be able to find, test, diagnose, and even repair disk drive issues before they escalate to catastrophic status.
And you won't have to worry about getting overwhelmed with a bunch of technical babble — Hard Disk Sentinel gives you an easily understandable description of what's going on, and offers tips on how to proceed! A laundry list of alerts and reports gives you the ultimate flexibility to determine how close you wish to monitor your drives, letting you safeguard your data at all times.
Unlike some other titles on the market, Hard Disk Sentinel is a complete monitoring solution. There's no need to purchase other tools in order to verify internal hard disks, external hard disks, SSDs, or disks in RAID arrays!
What kinds of info do you get with Hard Disk Sentinel? How about temperature, and the ability to view S.M.A.R.T. (Self Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data, a feature built into the latest disk drives. There's also real-time monitoring of disk transfer speeds, an important indicator of a failing hard drive!
Hey ChatGPT, in 25 words or less please:
Hard Disk Sentinel monitors your drives, detecting performance issues and impending failures, providing easy-to-understand alerts and tips to safeguard your data.
Did you use chatgpt too?
yeah. last time I had this, I paid about $150 for a recovery software. Ughhh…
This promotion has been downloaded too many times from this link.
You can get this download by making a purchase from this page.
just downloaded now from the direct link and no problems, try again
Hi. For future promotions, please right click the Download button from the receipt email, then select "Copy Hyperlink" and paste the copied address/URL into the address field of preferably either Firefox or Opera and if that is not possible, then any other browser except for Google Chrome or Edge. That should start the download.
In this case, please use the following direct URL… (I am not impressed)
How do you migrate its logs from pc to pc? Copyinf of Appdata and program files does not help.
Is this any good for SSD drives? I dont use oldskool magnetic disks anymore apart from in my NAS.
Yes, it works with SSD's.
Does the app send any usage/stats/etc back to vendor? If so, any way to stop/block?
OpenSauce CrystalDiskInfo with Options: Resident - Ticked, Startup - Ticked.
There, you just turned it into a fulltime SMART monitoring service that sits in the background.
Personally, I like the AOI edition.
Some BIOS will warn you of SMART issues, Windows do it as well but only when something terrible is happening.
when try to download nothing happens…. is normal for maybe anti virus to block these?
Unsure with this version, however with older ones you could just reset the date back to the promo period and re-install at a later time. I add the promo date to the filename to make it easier :)
Cheers
Can this be used to repair / recover missing or corrupted partitions from a mechanically sound working HDD
Could anyone share a YouTube video on repair or recovery process please
If you have to ask then you need to make a 1:1 image copy of your harddisk right now. There are lots of software out there. In my experience, R-Drive Image is a powerful and reasonably short learning time to start.
If you want quick and free then you can't ignore open source TestDisk. It's very small, and has a command line interface but it works.
Now if you have plenty of time and feel like a faux professional you can try https://www.hirensbootcd.org/hbcd-v152/
Look under Recovery Tools. There are a good list of partition recovery tools that might satisfy your needs.
anyone notice is very slow?
No way - I would use Open Source tools kits every day of the week over this.
suggestions, on windows?
I actually purchased a lifetime license as this software is great and I want to support them! :)
I want to thank the OP @brent3000 for posting this. Installed and tested my drives yesterday. It showed that the drive where I store all my photos and a whole bunch of other important stuff, was close to imminent failure. Copying everything off it as we speak. THANK YOU!
Backups are your friend :) Glad it helped its saved me alot of times on even new drives doing a burn in :)
I just purchased a 50% pro license from the link in the installer. Its past the date for 50% off code. FYI people want to buy still. Cheers
I dont think this deal should be marked as expired, i just installed today its still working.
![[Windows] Free: Hard Disk Sentinel Standard Edition 6.10 $0 @ Bitsdujour](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/13/861813.jpg?h=0717c314)
Direct link for those not keen to hand over an email,
The installer is already unlocked meaning you do not need a registration key to register the product. Please notice that this installer has lifetime use but it does not have any upgrades. If you upgrade your copy of this program in the future, then the program will appear as a trial and you will need to pay for a registration key if you want to register it.
Also, please install this product before 30th of September 2024 in order for the application to become unlocked. If you install it on or after 30th of September 2024, the application will not be unlocked and you will need a registration key to unlock it.
For easier reference here is the direct URL to the installer:
http://download.bitsdujour.com/bdj/downloads/2024/hdsentinel…