JG, Korean language is also supported, after installation you can change language at Configuration -> Preferences page.

Zen , Because probably your windows 98 pc does not operate as in the beginning of its life before 20+ years. This app is working perfectly in all the pcs that I own from XP and above!

Zen , Sorry, but I can confirm that generally Hard Disk Sentinel still supports Windows 98 too, just verified with the latest version too.

Not sure, but maybe your system had something missing or the giveaway installer may no longer able to install under Win98, sorry for that...

teo, It DOES work on XP. You misread.

xilolee, gotd20

TK, The program uses the SMART data reported by the drives to display current status/problems.

Neither this software nor any other software can 'read the drive's mind' and predict failure unless the drive itself reports an issue through its SMART status monitoring.

The only way to find out about problems 'about to happen' is to continually test the drive non-stop, and then you don't have a computer, you have a test bed for drives.

You continue to post negative comments about both the software and the site, and perhaps you have an agenda or issue that is unclear. Pounding away at the publisher because their host has a certificate that is three days out of date and hasn't yet been renewed is just petty.

pitt, Sorry for the troubles.

Yes, our secondary hosting provider (thanks Godaddy again) did not yet update the SSL certificate on that site, allowed to expire and we're still waiting them to install the new one.

Wonder how and why happened as the SSL certificate already paid already long before expiration of the certificate, so I expected renewal.
I'm shocked to see that it's still not updated/installed, even after contacted their support numerous days ago.
Sorry for the troubles, will need to consider changing provider as they seem unable to cooperate and ruin the reputation of the company.

however
- you can download any updated files from www.hdsentinel.com page (see the Downloads section) 100% securely from the main site
- the giveaway is hosted on different server, so no need to access the site where the certificate expired and the new certificate not yet updated

TK, Due to high traffic, secondary domain at different hosting provider required. I'm still in contact with their tech help and hopefully the new SSL will be installed quickly, so we may need to check it again in some hours.
Sorry for the troubles about that secondary server, however, it should not affect the current download / operation.

TK, There is absolutely nothing wrong with

hdsentinel.com

The SSL certificate expired on the secondary server

harddisksentinel.com

and the hosting company is already working on it, so hopefully will be up with the new certificate soon.
But this does not affect the operation or the download of this giveaway version.

Mike, nothing is 100% other than death and taxes. Hard Disk Sentinel is FREE so what do you have to loose?

True, there's no way to predict with 100% accuracy that a drive is about to fail, but a drive's S.M.A.R.T. data *might* sometimes provide a clue, whether it's a conventional drive or an SSD, e.g. "Critical Warning" or "Accumulated Runtime Bad Blocks" for SSDs, or "Reallocated Sectors Count" for conventional drives.

"By the way, if you have backup of everything, you do not want to rely on a 5+ year old drives for regular daily use."

*To me* it depends on your tolerance for inconvenience and the health of your bank account. If you've got a current full image backup, the most you'll lose is the down time to get and replace a drive.

Mike, Sorry, but you're absolutely wrong....
Exactly as you wrote, SSDs can also fail and monitoring them is even more important than hard disks: not only because they produce no noticeable signs of coming failure (no clicking sounds etc.) but also because they degrade with writes.
So without constant monitoring you can never know that your SSD is already experienced lots of wear - so you'll be surprised about "unforeseen" failures.
Hard Disk Sentinel (of course) supports all modern SSDs (today over 6000 SSDs supported), so you can both check the health, diagnose, repair problems.
Yes, SSDs can also fail (and can even have bad sectors).
You can check: https://www.hdsentinel.com/ssd_case_bad_sectors.php
and
https://www.hdsentinel.com/ssd_case_health_decrease_wearout.php

both are very common for SSDs.

Also I'm afraid you're wrong with hard disks. Yes, there can be unforeseen issues (eg. overvoltage, high temperature, mechanical damage/shock/vibration) which can kill a hard disk, but with constant monitoring you can see any, even minor changes, degradations, new problems - long before they can cause failure.
Many people may never notice 1-2 small issues (eg. 1-2 weak sectors, bad sectors or similar) but if they are noticed, we have the opportunity to perform backup.
Yes, I agree that many hard disks (and SSDs!) die completely long before they'd trigger S.M.A.R.T. alert in other tools and/or in the BIOS S.M.A.R.T. function because those are simply not sensitive enough for problems. In contrast, by proper methods, you can be notified about any minor issues, new problems - and can take backup.
I agree that replacement may be required: in many cases, we can't "repair" or make a failing drive perfect. But considering that modern hard disks have TBs of important data, we would need to know if we can read these back tomorrow - or we lose everything, eg. family photos collected for years - or even important business documents. The important and valuable is NOT the hard disk (or the SSD) but the data stored on them.

Mike,

I use Hard Disk Sentinal to report the drive temperature in the system tray, even for SSD drives, and as an early warning of S.M.A.R.T.-indications - I have supplemental cooling fans on all my HDD drives, keeping them ar 88 F / 31 C or below.

I have 20+-year-old hard drives working just fine, in computers where SSD is not a brilliant investment ( there are PATA SSD available from China direct, but ... ), and I have stacks of older spare hard drives that aren't going anywhere, so I might as well use Hard Drive Sentinel to keep an eye on them as they just keep on keein' on.

Swapping in a SSD on a SATA system that has limited transfer rates, especially older systems, are also not a savvy investment - expensive for what real gain?

How fast do we have to wait for a web page to refresh, or wait for a download to finish - SSD and HDD wait just the same for slower activities.

Data maintenance and recovery for spinning magnetic recording media are stable and sophisticated - Steve Gibson's SpinRite for older, smaller drives, Dmitriy Primochenko's HDD Regenerator for larger and newer drives, Ace Labs PC-3000 for electronic manipulation, and some wonderful surface recovery labs.

SSD recovery utilities ... not so much.

We all need Hard Disk Sentinel, because we all need Hard Disk Drives.

Though the discussion of SSD versus HDD reminds me of buying our newest car - waiting for electric, we went Diesel again, but we also have an old gas car - electric car, and SSD, will arrive in anther generation, maybe.

Let us know how you find Hard Disk Sentinal working for you with your own SSD drives.

Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
.

Tryit, useless software for SSD drives monitoring what? I trashed all mechanical drives, because of constant headache they gave me. So, you are correct, the death of the mechanical drives is unavoidable too.

Hanck, SSD drives also fail and usually with no signs (or at least no noticeable signs) without monitoring.
Plus as the health of the SSDs constantly decrease due wear, monitoring the status and lifetime of the SSDs are EVEN MORE important than hard disks, exactly to be notified about the degradation and prepare for planned replacement.

I wonder why you think "useless" - as Hard Disk Sentinel (of course) supports all modern SSDs in different connections/formats (eg. SATA, SAS, NVMe M.2, etc.) plus (alone) other special flash devices too eg. industrial memory cards / eMMC devices.

Cinthi, the standard version has limited repairing functions. For example, it can perform the (destructive) test at Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test, which forces the hard disk to repair issues and stabilize problems. Similar function may be usually called as "low level format" in other tools.
The Pro version has advanced repairing functions, for example the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Disk Repair , which is safe for stored data.
You can check:
https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_hard_disk_drive.php
generally about how to repair problems.

Cinthi,

Hard Disk Sentinel calls Windows/DOS [ ChkDsk /R ] command which tries to move readable data from bad sectors, and then marks those sectors to not be used afterward.

The program offers the ability to edit SMART data to move the indicators to compensate for inaccurate error reports ( it happens ).

For surface repair, see Steve Gibson's SpinRite for older, smaller drives, Dmitriy Primochenko's HDD Regenerator for larger and newer drives, Ace Labs PC-3000 for electronic manipulation, and various independent drive surface recovery labs.

So, folks, download it, use it, and tell us how it works for you.

Thanks.
.

Janos Mathe, Thank You for WARNING !
that as i thought , it performs a FORCED destructive test and destroys behind all repair all stored data
Beware

Peter Blaise, Sorry, but absolutely not: chkdsk (even if sounds surprising) NEVER fixes the hard disk itself, but fixes only the logical volume (partition).

Hard Disk Sentinel never uses chkdsk of course and (as pro data recovery companies) do not really recommend chkdsk on a problematic drive.

The page: https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_weak_sectors.php

describes the situation: how and why chkdsk is not useful at all, as it does NOT fix the problems.
Instead the proper methods can be used to really fix issues, for example the surface tests in Hard Disk Sentinel. Yes, there are destructive types - and (in the Pro version) there are other methods too.

Thanks for pointing on the other tools but as they may not be compatible with new hard disks, controllers, SSDs, hybrid drives, I'd be careful.

Also please note that the Disk Repair function (yes, in Hard Disk Sentinel Pro version only) can do safe repairing and the mentioned "regeneration" just safer and more flexible (eg. without the need of booting to DOS so you can use the system for other purposes) so please recommend this too on the page of the other tools ;-)

Thank you [ Janos Mathe ] for your terrific Highly-Recommended-As-Safe software, and thank you for participating here.

I apologize for conflating a variety of behaviors form a variety of utilities, and of course, you are correct about your own software ( why wouldn't you be ? ! ? ) in that your own Hard Disk Sentinel, offered here at Giveaway Of The Day, does NOT call out for the DOS/Windows [ ChkDsk /R ] program ... instead, what wa on my mind was the free [ Tweaking. com ] Windows Repair AIO program, among others, that do call on DOS/Windows programs.

I will have to try the HDSentinel surface test on a blanked partitionless drive to see what difference there is compared to read tests from SpinRite and HDDRegenerator reports before and after running HDSentinel destructive surface "test" - I'll setup a "mule" PATA/SATA system with Windows 7-64-Pro and give it a go - at the moment, I just boot to CD to service drives, but even an old small HD will hold Windows 7 to boot allowing me to run repair utilities under windows on dismounted drives that are directly attached to internal BIOS SMB System Memory Bus PATA/SATA sockets.

HDDRegenerator also says for us to blank a drive and let Windows check the surface while it re-partitions and re-formats the drive in order to recognize and respect a drive's own logging of it's own bad and re-located sectors.

Note that HDDRegenerator also works from within Windows, but only on an unmounted drive.

I recommend: backing up first,
... and then "playing" with drives,
... and "playing" to learn,
... not "playing" to return the drive to use as a sole receiver of critical data,
... new and used replacement drives are -w-a-y- too cheap.

Safety wise, I have found that SpinRite and HDDRegenerator either work, or self-exit when confronted with incompatible hard drive device-and-control schemas ( I know exactly under what situations both programs can trash drive data, or the drive itself, and both programmers have responded with a "so what?" attitude regarding the admittedly arcane possibilities of my concocted situations happening in the real world for real customers - yeah, I'm a surreal beta tester, I guess - and since HDDRegenerator suggests backing up and then regenerating a blank drive, who cares about data loss when there's no data to lose ? ).

Though, out of all of this, I've got some powerful refrigerator magnets, and magnets for car oil drain pans and oil filters. ;-)

- - - - -

To argue: "... chkdsk (even if sounds surprising) NEVER fixes the hard disk itself, but fixes only the logical volume (partition) ..."

Correct-ish,

- [ ChkDsk /F ] attempts to fix the math and mapping between directories and file allocation tables,

- [ ChkDsk /R ] tries to move readable data ( ~ 5 read attempts per cluster, and then it gives up, your mileage may vary ) to unused clusters ( perhaps as-yet untested clusters ! ), fix the math and mapping in directories and file allocation tables, and mark clusters as bad in file allocation tables.

I hesitate to describe that as "... fixes only the logical volume (partition) ..." because that implies boot record and partition table analysis and repair capabilities that I do not experience ChkDsk as having - not the track headers and CRC data that SpinRite and HDDRegenerator claim to re-write, if not re-build.

I do see an option, during new installation of Windows, to perform a drive surface scan during partitioning of a blanked hard drive, and I suppose that read-verify-scan causes the drive itself to read and mark it's own unreadable sectors, and re-locate them, before finishing the first partitioning operation, before installing Windows - so Windows sees a clean drive, any bad sectors have been hidden by re-location.

For the curious among us, we may find within our existing DOS/Windows. these programs and options:
- chkntfs /c for NTFS to schedule the volume to be checked the next time the computer is restarted.
- chkdsk /i for NTFS to perform a less vigorous check of index entries, which reduces the amount of time required to run chkdsk.
- chkdsk /b for NTFS to clear the list of bad clusters on the volume and re-scan all allocated and free clusters for errors - I'll have to try that on my nasty drive that inherited the mapping of now phantom bad clusters from a bad drive during brute-force cloning.

- - - - -

Price wise,
- Hard Disk Sentinel offers surface repair for ~$22 ( free here today ) to $33 ( pro ),
- HDDRegenerator costs ~$66,
- SpinRite is $90,
- ACE Labs costs ~$8,500,
... just sayin', folks.

Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
.

Peter Blaise, Thanks for your message, wow! Always good to discuss with advanced users, you must have lots of experiences with different tools :-)

Sorry, but chkdsk (even with /R) does NOT work to fix the hard disk. Yes, exactly as you wrote: "tries to move readable data ( ~ 5 read attempts per cluster"

This is the problem: the cluster is a term of the actual file system (logical drive / partition), this is where chkdsk /R is operating.

If chkdsk finds something "bad" then it marks the CLUSTER of the partition as bad and then reports in the summary that XX clusters as bad. It does not force the hard disk itself to repair the sector by reallocation and replacing from the spare sector pool.

Why this is problem?
- while the bad cluster is not used, the usable capacity is still reserved. "Real" bad sectors which are fixed by the hard disk by reallocation uses a spare area, so the usable capacity does not decrease upon "real" bad sectors.
- if you ever re-partition, re-format the drive, the original sector will be used again, can cause data corruption / data loss again
- if you attempt to clone the drive, you may receive error due to unreadable sectors OR (even worse) the cloning tool may "copy" the bad sectors related to the logical drive/partition, so then a new disk drive will show bad sectors in chkdsk (yes, these can be then "repaired" after the cloning, but may be annoying/weird).

If you check this page:
https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_case_weak_sectors.php
it describes the situation, shows that when chkdsk "fixed" the bad sectors, they are still there, not really fixed, any surface test functions (for example Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test in Hard Disk Sentinel) will show those. So they are not reallocated, just marked on the actual partition as "bad".

YD Forums,
https://www.hdsentinel.com/rev_previous_versions.php

dobry juzer,
Yes, Slovak language is supported too of course: you can change language at Configuration -> Preferences page.

Staal Burger, It is not compatible with 95/98, evn though it says it is. See my comment above.