Make disk health look less than it is

[PrinceOfAbyss]

Hello. I use the software to monitor my disk's health, and I have a question that I bet no one has ever asked before:

My sysadmin refuses to justify the purchase of a new harddisk for my machine since the disk's health is at 95%... But I worry that a disk with 700+ days of operation and about 14K start/stops might suddenly die on me, losing my work in progress, etc... I backup daily, but with a newer disk I'd backup once a week, or once every two weeks...

Anyway, I thought to tamper somehow HD sentinel to make the disk's health lower than it is... Is there any way to do so? I know this may be a little inappropriate, but with the cheap sysadmin I have, it may be the only solution, unless of course I start kicking the machine while it's operating to truly damage the disk...

TIA.

[hdsentinel]

Please try to open Configuration -> Advanced options page. On that, there is an option: Health Calculation Method.
You can set from the default "Analyse data field" to "Analyse data field (more strict, recommended for servers)" option.
As a result, each problems would be considered more seriously, resulting lower health. The purpose is exactly to increase attention better: as this way any (even minor) issue may cause even higher reduction of the hard disk health.

Originally designed for mission critical environments, where any (even minor) issue is unacceptable and admins may prefer planned replacement sooner to prevent bigger issues/problems and downtime.

[PrinceOfAbyss]

Thanks a ton for your reply! I tried that and the health stayed the same! Maybe the disk is at an OK state despite the 94% of its health!

However, when I said "tamper" in my previous post, I literally meant "tamper"... Like making the program report 300-400 bad sectors, and also a health at about 10-15%, and a remaining life expectancy at let's say 40-50 days... Not like it is now: More than 1000

I suspect however that I shouldn't expect a formal reply from you in this...

[hdsentinel]

Generally with the tests (for example Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test) you can perform intensive testing to reveal any possible further issues - or confirm that the drive is now stable, can be still used.

So if there are other, currently "hidden" problem with the hard disk then this test would reveal it (and as a result the health may go down) or in "worst" case you can confirm that the hard disk can be still used and there is no need to replace.
Both situations are good....