However, users may opt for a stricter data field evaluation mode (recommended for servers), or set the tool to verify vendor-specific values instead (received from health-related S.M.A.R.T. The performance and health ratings use a default configuration to perform calculations, namely basic data field analysis from the S.M.A.R.T. info), total start/stop count, and a graph with the health evolution. The first panel has the role of a summary that indicates the overall status of the disk performance and health, along with power-on time and estimated lifetime remaining (extracted from S.M.A.R.T. Its interface seems cluttered at first sight, since it is filled with technical information pertaining to the hard disk, such as temperature, S.M.A.R.T., and disk performance, not to mention used and free space for each identified drive (local and removable). Installing the tool takes minimal time and effort, and Hard Disk Sentinel can be immediately launched afterwards. Under normal circumstances, the full package may be purchased for the price of $35.00 / €28.00, but Softpedia readers get an exclusive (temporary) deal that sums up to $14.00 / €11.20 (excluding VAT). Users can test it for 30 days while keeping in mind that some of the features are disabled during the trial. Designed to oversee all hard disk drives and adjacent removable devices, this utility has a lot of handy tricks up its sleeve, such as system tray indicators for disk health and temperature, as well as email notifications on critical events and automatic PC shutdown.

On the other hand, Hard Disk Sentinel Professional stands out. However, most of them have a pretty limited feature pack that does not leave much room for configuration, an aspect sought by most expert users.

There are a lot of free system monitoring tools available for this job, such as Speccy, CPU-Z and SpeedFan. Any serious PC user should have a go-to application that deals with such difficult scenarios to prevent issues.

Hard disk monitoring applications keep track of all disks' status and the best ones are able to automatically send notifications for any issues, such as the risk for hardware overheating.

Hard disk sentinel pro