Copy pastes from my discussion with the makers of HardDisk Sentinel...
<<<<< DEVNULLIUS >>>>>
Hello,
I'm was wondering... Does your software monitor registry notifications too? I've seen this with Puran's free tool, and I liked it :)
<<<<< HD SENTINEL >>>>>
Thanks for your message and question !
No, I can make sure Hard Disk Sentinel (as it's main purpose is to monitor hard disk / SSD status, alert on failures, possible problems and offers backup functions) does not monitor registry notifications as does not really this purpose.
I can confirm Hard Disk Sentinel Pro has functions to export registry item(s) automatically / scheduled (see Configuration -> Operations -> Export registry items) but it does not monitor the changes in registry.
If you have any questions or I can help, please let me know.
Have a nice day,
Janos Mathe
developer
www.hdsentinel.cominfo hdsentinel.com
Find us on:
www.facebook.com/HDSentinel<<<<< DEVNULLIUS >>>>>
Thank you for your prompt reply - appreciated!
When I mentioned Puran, I ment Acronis.
So I think we did not understand each other well.
Let me copy paste from the ACRONIS site, and ask you again: do you offer the same functionality?
" Monitors Event logs
Flags events that may indicate that data is in danger so you can back it up. "
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/#features<<<<< HD SENTINEL >>>>>
Thanks!
No, I can confirm this is not available in current version of Hard Disk Sentinel
as Hard Disk Sentinel (compared to other tools) monitors the _real_ hard disk status and problems.
Even if this sounds surprising, the event logs in 99% situations are not related
to hard disk issues but may indicate problems with the actual OS / file system.
This is exactly the same as how chkdsk can (not...) be used to diagnose a hard disk problem.
This is why many users switch from that tool to Hard Disk Sentinel, as Hard Disk Sentinel shows the real hard disk status and failures.
Anyway, it is possible that this function may be available in a later version.
Best wishes,
<<<<< DEVNULLIUS >>>>>
:) thank you again, but just wondering...
Doesn't Acronis Drive Monitor monitor the same SMART logs as you do? Or is there something special that you guys do that I am unaware off?
Very curious now, and I'll update an article with correct info (link to follow:)
Regards
<<<<< HD SENTINEL >>>>>
Thanks for your message and question.
Basically we can think S.M.A.R.T. is a simple thing - if one software reads it and shows there are no problems according S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard disk, we are fine - the drive can be used. But this is not true.
Years ago companies and home users started to feel S.M.A.R.T. notifications and values can't be effectively used to predict hard disk failures. Even Google had the same conclusion: the traditional S.M.A.R.T. monitoring methods (which are built in the system BIOSes and what is used by all hard disk monitoring software, except Hard Disk Sentinel) are simply not enough - as by these, the users have no information about the actual problems, if the status of the drive gets worse (or better), have no control about the information they got (for example they can't adjust values / reset errors, etc..)
This is because such traditional S.M.A.R.T. monitoring method designed to verify the "Treshold" and "Value" fields of important S.M.A.R.T. attributes, compare their relation and alert upon any problems.
Some monitoring tools offered "TEC (threshold-exceed-condition) date" and happily promised 100-200 years lifetime (!) for an almost dead hard disk. At least questionable ...
So the conclusion was that such tools and methods are simply useless.
During development of Hard Disk Sentinel we focused on a completely different method, to verify and report the REAL hard disk problems, the real errors and offer the users to even control / manage such information. I mean Hard Disk Sentinel (in addition to the above) checks the real errors reported by the hard disk.
This makes it even more sensitive to hard disk problems, errors and allow users to check even if a minor issue is detected with their drives, long before it would lead to catastrophe.
If you open Support -> Knowledge base -> S.M.A.R.T. function article (or directly at
http://www.hdsentinel.com/smart/index.php ) you can check the most important problems with the "traditional" method, why the data failures really could not be predicted by that method and how Hard Disk Sentinel is different.
Please check the example drive on the bottom of that page: that drive would be considered "failure predicted" in Hard Disk Sentinel - but considered perfect in other tools. (and we did not speak about SSDs, as they also require special method to examine / report status. This is of course immediately available with Hard Disk Sentinel as it currently supports 1500+ SSD models in addition to the 4500+ known hard disk models).
During the development, we collected high number of reports and disk information from data-recovery companies and verified status of failed disks to make the error-reporting as accurate as possible.
Please check
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#difference as it may give some more information.
If you have Hard Disk Sentinel installed, I'd also recommend to check Help -> Appendix (or check the online Help at
http://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/index.html ) for details about Vendor specific vs raw values, Health calculation and so.
And we did not speak about one other important field: the detection of S.M.A.R.T. information at all.
Hard Disk Sentinel has the highest possible compatibility as it can access S.M.A.R.T. information with various hardware combinations, for example special RAID controllers, enclosures, port multipliers and so. If you check Compatibility pages (
http://www.hdsentinel.com/compatibility.php ) you may see this,
For example on
http://www.hdsentinel.com/compatibility_disk_controllers.php you can see dozens of RAID controllers - with them, Hard Disk Sentinel can successfully collect S.M.A.R.T. status about the hard disks / SSDs, even if RAID configuration is used.
Other hard disk monitoring software offers no monitoring with such RAID controllers and/or special devices like external enclosures, SCSI / SAS hard disks and so.
Back to the original question:
The idea to monitor the events is not bad.
However, when the Windows event log starts to report problems, usually the hard disk is almost failed and the user already notified that data loss occured (for example by seeing "delayed write failed ...." notifications on the tray).
So we'd need to alert LONG time before this, report any problems (even minor ones which may be ignored by other tools) MUCH faster and allow extensive disk testing to verify the status, reveal and fix possible hard disk problems.
Plus the additional features (automatic on-problem "panic" and scheduled backup, alerts, remote monitoring, etc..) ensure highest possible data protection.
This is what Hard Disk Sentinel (and only that) can do now.
Sorry if I was too long / boring - but you asked :-)
Feel free if I can help in any ways, provide further information or clarify.
Have a nice day,
Janos Mathe
<<<<< DEVNULLIUS >>>>>
:) great feedback, and not sure how you actually do your job. Probably by directly talking with the firmware...? I dunno :)
More importantly I found the registry notification very convenient. I often auto-schedule boot-time chkdsk scans, which auto-reboots and only showing info for a small amount of time. Even when all software (including yours, from past experiences) consider the disk (more or less) ok enough, volume bitmap problems still occur. Also see:
http://scforum.info/index.php?topic=8034.10 :(
And for that reason only I just LOVE the (extra) feedback from the registry. There's no such thing as being warned enough ;p Right?
<<<<< HD SENTINEL >>>>>
Thanks for the info and the links !
Please note that the boot time scandisk / chkdsk usually cause more problems, instead of repairs... This is why exactly Hard Disk Sentinel has option to _disable_ it (as recommended by data recovery companies), because on a problematic drive (which may have problems but easy to recover data) such automatic chkdsk can cause permanent data loss by overwriting / removing file chain information...
The volume corruption (even if sounds interesting) usually completely independent from the hard disk itself but can be caused by many other factors (data / power cables, hard disk controller drivers, physical memory problems,
overheat conditions, overclock, non-standard reboot / reset, power loss and so). ***
You may check
http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cases.php for such typical situations.
Communication errors / weak sectors may be reported in Hard Disk Sentinel (these are usually ignored by most software).
But if you can use Report -> Send test report to developer option in Hard Disk Sentinel, it is possible to check the actual status and verify what can cause troubles on your system.
<< :) >>
Karma!!!
devnullius
*** I updated my "I hate harddisks"-article with this feedback (
http://scforum.info/index.php/topic,8034.msg20300.html#msg20300). Still not buying it ;ppppp
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