Hard Disk Monitoring

Hi,

I'll buy HD Sentinel, but i have some questions.

I use a PC as Home Server (Download, Database...).
Configuration : i5, 16GB, 1 SSD, 1 HDD (maybe a second one)
Usage : H24, Virtualization (2 VMs)

My HDD is a WD Green, with aggressive head parking

So i would change the detection frequency to the MAX, but with this drive, i think it will be a problem.
Could i scheduled a job, to open HD Sentinel during a short period, every day (to limit access to the drives)?

Second question :
Does HD Sentinel write informations/files on the drive where it's installed?
My SSD is my system drive and i don't want crash
My HDD has aggressive head parking, so if the software write often files, my Western Digital will park/unpark heads => Consequence : Quickly dead

Thanks for your informations/ideas...

Regards,
Patrick

PS : Sorry for my poor english

écriture sur SSD

Hi Kompressor,

> My HDD is a WD Green, with aggressive head parking

Yes, I know the problem.
If you prefer, Hard Disk Sentinel has functions to keep the drive constantly working, which prevents the drive from parking.
This
- increases the lifetime of the hard disk (as the amount of parking will be lower)
- increases the overall disk performance as the hard disk will be available immediately when you read/write, no need to wait for leaving the parking zone

If you are interested in this, you can do the following to prevent constant parking in Hard Disk Sentinel (for any hard disk, not only the WD Green):

1) select Disk menu -> Advanced Power Management option (if it is supported by the hard disk, so not grey), and drag the slider to right: adjust the settings to "Maximum performance and power consumption". You may also enable the "Automatic adjust setting on restart" option, because (even if hard disks should remember this setting after power off) some hard disks may re-set to default value. If the option enabled, Hard Disk Sentinel auto-adjust if required.

Also you may consider a different method, which works in all situations (even if the drive / controller does not allow using the Advanced Power Management function):

2) open Configuration -> Disk Control page and in the "Do not allow spin down of hard disks" field enter a
*
(star) character. Then Hard Disk Sentinel (while active) prevents power management function to be activated by periodically sending a command to the hard disk, preventing sleep / spin down / parking (this would also keep load-unload count low and maintain better performance).


> So i would change the detection frequency to the MAX, but with this drive, i think it will be a problem.

Generally, it may also help (to prevent unload/unload) but the above methods are better.


> Could i scheduled a job, to open HD Sentinel during a short period, every day (to limit access to the drives)?

If you prefer, yes: you can manually create a scheduled job in Windows scheduler to start Hard Disk Sentinel when preferred.


> Does HD Sentinel write informations/files on the drive where it's installed?

By default yes, but you can easily override this: on Configuration -> Advanced options page, there is a button "Change folder to store statistics and settings".
With that, you can configure a different folder (for example on your hard disk) to store everything and does not write to the SSD.