Hard Disk Sentinel Pro (free key) save $35 / hard disk monitoring software with support of HDD/SSD drives (YMMV)

On my third drive -- which I've had as an external for ages says 1362 days power on time. 73 days estimated remaining lifetime. Good to know I guess. lol 15k start/stops

If you go to the site bitsdujour.com (bits d u jour (dot) c o m). Find the page for HD Sentinel
You can have them notify you when / if he offers his software on sale again.

He has a family license deal on the HDSentinel website that's decent (people have no problem paying $10 for Malware Bytes per copy so...) but bits dujour does offer it lower than the family price. I bought 10 licenses several year back can't remember the exact cost.

I sent him my reports from all the hard drives (I used to refurbish a lot of surplus PCs for resale or donation) it's amazing to see the results on some of these. I hope one day he posts an open source look at his (not scientific but data on drive / year type of controllers / head design and how they stood up. It's not a controlled environment so it's hard to draw conclusions because some don't treat their equipment carefully but anyway.

Tried using direct link to key posted in Wiki and the file wants to make changes to my registry. Opened the file in notepad and it's all jumbled text??

Quote from Syrinx : Tried using direct link to key posted in Wiki and the file wants to make changes to my registry. Opened the file in notepad and it's all jumbled text??

http://slickdeals.net/forums/show...stcount=16

Quote from Unforgiven : http://slickdeals.net/forums/show...stcount=16

Thanks

Thanks OP!!!

I decided to try HD Sentinel, so I installed it onto this old WXP PC that I'm typing this post on right now; the HDD in this PC is a 40GB ExcelStor Technology J340.

For the record, I have always—and ONLY—been a dedicated SpinRite user...UNTIL NOW!!!

After installing and running HD Sentinel, I navigated to the Overview tab where the following info was reported:

"The hard disk is operating in UDMA mode 2 (33 Mbytes/sec) which reduces performance [bold and underline mine].
It is recommended to use an 80-conductor IDE cable if the controller supports higher data transfer rate(s)."

So, I shut down this PC, went into my PC toolbox, got an 80-conductor PATA cable, and replaced the previously-attached 40-conductor PATA cable with the new, 80-conductor PATA cable, and...VOILA!!!

After restarting this PC, and navigating back to HD Sentinel's Overview tab, the following is NOW reported:

"The hard disk status is PERFECT. Problematic or weak sectors were not found and there are no spin up or data transfer errors.

No actions needed.

Power on time: 766 days, 23 hours
Estimated remaining lifetime: more than 1000 days
Total start/stop count: 1,444"

What else can I say?

Thank you! I was looking for something to check out how my SSD is behaving. Downloaded per the WIKI with no problem.

This thing says that my SSD is operating at 80% and asks me to check the cables. I changed cables and ports, but still get the same thing. It is old pc so SSD is mounted using a PCI SATA card.

anybody know what could be the problem?

Quote from green_key : stats from my 8 year old computer in storage: Heath 17% Bad. Estimated remaining lifetime: 36 days. I'm embarrassed, my hardware never score so low b4. Guess I should get new hard disk??? Wonder if it's worth it since I don't use it that much...

well, its up to you, but if that HD possibly has very little life left in it, you can consider swapping in a new (or newer) drive ...

..at least back up any important data on the drive, just in case...

Quote from 722 : On my third drive -- which I've had as an external for ages says 1362 days power on time. 73 days estimated remaining lifetime. Good to know I guess. lol 15k start/stops

Take those estimated days with a huge grain of salt =P One of my older externals (1251 days, 5 hours of power on time) has an estimated lifetime of 11 days - it's been that way (11 days) for about six months now >_<

Still I love this program, and great to be able to get the Pro for free even though it seems it was meant just for those magazine users lol.

Quote from waveofdestiny : Take those estimated days with a huge grain of salt =P One of my older externals (1251 days, 5 hours of power on time) has an estimated lifetime of 11 days - it's been that way (11 days) for about six months now >_< Still I love this program, and great to be able to get the Pro for free even though it seems it was meant just for those magazine users lol.

Haha I'll have to do that. 5 hours of power on time w/ 1251 days? Have you only backed up once? xD I should keep my drives unplugged until use.

Quote from 722 : Haha I'll have to do that. 5 hours of power on time w/ 1251 days? Have you only backed up once? xD I should keep my drives unplugged until use.

No no, 1251 days and 5 hours of power on time >_< It was originally a backup drive itself but when its health started to go into the red I made it into just a drive filled with stuff I wouldn't mind losing (emulator station, download drive). I do back it up though bi-monthly to another external so all is good.

I always keep my main computer and external drives on 24/7. I guess just goes to show the quality of good external drives really, been going strong for almost three and a half years without any faults (well obviously some faults to get to 11% health rating, but none that have caused it to fail so far).

Quote from waveofdestiny : No no, 1251 days and 5 hours of power on time >_< It was originally a backup drive itself but when its health started to go into the red I made it into just a drive filled with stuff I wouldn't mind losing (emulator station, download drive). I do back it up though bi-monthly to another external so all is good. I always keep my main computer and external drives on 24/7. I guess just goes to show the quality of good external drives really, been going strong for almost three and a half years without any faults (well obviously some faults to get to 11% health rating, but none that have caused it to fail so far).

Oh I was thinking 5 hours of use lol! I see. My WD 1TB external is at 1213 days, 8 hours w/ 7000 start/stop count and it's on 24/7. Still at 100% and will hopefully go a lot longer.

Quote from xxxxxx : What exactly are we supposed to use to open the .key file linked in wiki???

Upon installing, the program will ask for the key and you browse to the directory where you saved it, click on the key and it will load and finish . Your now done.
Worked for me, nice program