Keeping your hard disk healthy should be your top priority when it comes to your computer. Potential problems, degradations and even failures can lead to losing the entire data on the disk. Portable Hard Disk Sentinel is a tool that can help monitor your HDD.
The software comes with a nice interface and with an intuitive layout. Considering the complex and advanced functions of this app, the simple UI helps you to better understand what the software has to offer.
From the main window you can also see a complex list of data about your disk drive, such as the serial number, interface, model ID, firmware revision, number of sectors and many other details. Also, you can check real-time information regarding the transfer rate.
Portable Hard Disk Sentinel can monitor various things about your disks, such as temperature and S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) attributes. You can also perform tests with this program.
For example, you can perform a surface test to verify the sectors’ accessibility and readability. This can be done in five different ways. Some are non-destructive, only checking the disk’s performance, while other methods involve refreshing the data area of the storage device or even erasing all information.
Various test preferences, such as sector order, can be adjusted to suit your needs.
Also, you can customize your alerts. Thus, you can set the app to let you know when failures are expected, when the disk’s health is low, when temperatures are too high, when new log entries are added and when free disk space is low. For any of these you can play a sound, send or display a message, create a panic back-up or shut down your system.
All in all, Portable Hard Disk Sentinel is an advanced utility that can give you valuable information about the state of your drives. Some previous experience with this type of software is required, mainly because of the advanced functions it offers. Since the app is completely portable, it doesn't need to be installed to the computer and it shouldn't leave any traces to the Windows Registry.

Limitations:
· 30 days trial
· Partial functionality
· Nag screen

What's New in This Release:
Improvements and new features:
· detect and display warning if the hard disk capacity can't be fully utilised or the actual hard disk controller / driver may cause data corruption because of mis-addressing large drives
· option to save separate authentic reports for selected hard disks, saving current date and time and version to authentic reports
· option to copy log of disk surface test to clipboard
· option to select shut down / restart / standby / hibernate to be done upon hard disk problem (PRO version)
· improved "Do not allow spin down of disks" function, maintain low load/unload count
· improved multi-language support
Improved hardware support:
· improved support for Intel RAID controllers with Intel RST driver version 11.6 and newer
· improved acoustic management / advanced power management / free fall control
· improved text description and support for Kingston SSDs, OCZ SSDs
· improved health and text description for Samsung 830 and 840 SSDs
· improved detection of multi-driv...