HDDs (short for Hard Disk Drive) and SSDs (Solid State Drive) are digital devices which store all the data including the operating system, different programs, drivers, utilities on the one hand and the files stored by a computer user (i.e. photos, videos, text documents, music, and so on) on the other hand. HDDs and SSDs are the most important and essential parts of the computer and they need continuous and precise care and maintenance because if they fail and become unusable you will lose all your precious data. To monitor the status and health of hard and solid state drives Hungarian software developers have created a great tool called Hard Disk Sentinel.

Hard Disk Sentinel Pro is one of the best programs in its class. It is well designed, very functional, supports all kind of drives and includes a lot of useful features. It allows you to find out many details about the technical features of hard and solid state drives; its temperature, health status, etc. Thus, shortly saying, the main aim of the program is to identify, test, diagnose and solve problems related to drives.

Hard Disk Sentinel Pro provides detailed textual description, tips and reports with the most comprehensive information about the HDD and SSD drives installed on your computer or external media (USB flash drives, and so on). There are many different options for alert notifications and reports that help to ensure maximum safety of your valuable data.

In principle, the Standard version includes all necessary features which are more than enough for ordinary computer users but the Professional one contains many other tools such as complete surface analysis of disk drives, file compression, etc., and it is nearly the same as the Enterprise version therefore we have chosen it for our review.

At first sight it seems that the interface of the program is a little clumsy and overcrowded. But it is not so. Everything is conveniently and comfortably arranged; every section, every button has its function and purpose. There is a Menu Bar at the top (it includes six categories- File, Disk, View, Report, Configuration and Help) that provides you with plenty of information from checking for a new version through the current version of the program. A little below you can see the Command Toolbar for quick access to the main tools of the program. A number of things can be performed with the help of them, for instance, manage, test, save, etc. your physical hard disks.

The main window of the program is divided into two panes; on the left side you can view a list of available physical hard or solid state drives presented on your system and on the right side Hard Disk Sentinel shows some detailed information about them. There are seven tabs: Overview, Temperature, S.M.A.R.T., Information, Log, Disk Performance and Alerts.

Hard Disk Sentinel is an ideal solution for data protection; the program can be effectively used to prevent hard and solid state drive data loss caused by an unexpected failure. Thanks to a lot of advanced features it helps you to view and analyze every detail of your drives. Thus, even the smallest problems with them will not be missed by the program.

In this section the program allows you to check your physical drives performance and health. If the selected drive shows up in the green zone it means that your drive is functioning properly and there are no actions you need to take at that time. Basically everything is in an excellent working state. If drives are marked in yellow or red color this means that Hard Drive Sentinel has found some bad sectors or other problems on the drive and informs you about all these issues in detail. Below the drives health rating it will display some information about the total running time of the drive, roughly estimated remaining lifetime and lifetime writes (SSDs) or total start / stop count (HDDs).

At the bottom of this section is a graphical chart which displays the health of HDD or SSD drives over time if you keep Hard Disk Sentinel running over a length of time. By clicking on a small icon in the form of a floppy disk you can save this graph as a BMP or JPG image. All the information which is displayed in this section is very important and can be crucial for the proper and safe performance of your PC. As such you can check it on daily basis and immediately backup all your precious data to prevent valuable data loss for good when it shows an alert.

Hard Disk Sentinel is a recognized and advanced solution for monitoring HDD and SSD drives. The program has a lot of features to help users monitor the use of disk space and temperature. It allows you to create and schedule jobs, do automatic backups, view S.M.A.R.T. attributes of the disks, configure different types of alerts, generate reports. You can customize the keyboard shortcuts, protect the program with password, etc. It won’t prevent a drive from failing but in many cases it can give you a warning in time and allow you to backup up your data elsewhere before the actual failure occurs.