HD Sentinel ignores detection frequency setting [4.60 PRO]

[grossvogel]

Restarting HD Sentinel and rebooting my machine doesn't help. The rest of the settings work as expected. Am I missing an extra setting somewhere?

[hdsentinel]

Excuse me, but I can confirm that there is no bug here, I can confirm that Hard Disk Sentinel does not ignore the detection frequency.

The detection frequency controls how often Hard Disk Sentinel accessed hard disk under normal conditions, when only scheduled detection should occur.
But in many other cases it is possible that the hard disk accessed, for example
- if you adjust / modify settings in the configuration window
- upon detection of hardware change, for example insertion / removal of hard disk(s), pendrives, memory card(s) or so
- on midnight (when the internal daily statistics and counters reset)
- when Hard Disk Sentinel started / restarted

These events may trigger an automatic detection which happens regardless of the detection frequency - but it is not a bug, exactly the opposite: designed to react to the change of the environment.

[hdsentinel]

Also on the image you may see that the VOLUME is opened periodically (not the hard disk itself!), to update the total / free space display.
This is completely normal - as this helps Hard Disk Sentinel to monitor and display the total/free/used hard disk space.
As this information is provided by the cache of the operating system, it does not really cause hard disk access, have no effect on (for example) power management.

[grossvogel]

Thank you for a detailed explanation! The real reason I'm digging into this is because HD Sentinel keeps reporting the power state of my hard drives as "Active". At first, I went looking for programs preventing them from spinning down, but now that I'm absolutely certain that these drives do spin down, I'm inclined to think that there must be something wrong with the way my HDD controller communicates with HD Sentinel.

[hdsentinel]

Yes, I completely understand and know what you mean.

Many disk controllers / motherboards (more precisely their driver) report the power state incorrectly when detected, to verify if the hard disk is really sleeping or not.
Hard Disk Sentnel has various methods to determine the actual power state of the hard disk drives (both "generic" methods and specific methods for different controllers / motherboards / chipsets) but in many cases we have no real, accurate information about the actual power state: the driver of the controller may respond that the drive is actually working (in all cases, even if it's sleeping) or sleeping (in all cases, even if it's active).

The periodic detection can yes, prevent hard disk drives from entering sleep mode, as the detection command (like any other hard disk command) resets the idle counter. But if the detection frequency set to detect information rarely, then the hard disk may enter sleeping state and the power state detection is designed exactly to let the drive(s) stay sleeping, without waking up just to update the temperature/health/S.M.A.R.T. status.
Just if the driver does not report this information correctly, things may not be perfect.

Please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then it is possible to check the actual chipset / controler and driver version and what is the "raw" information it provides about the hard disks, what kind of power-management information the software could get by the different methods as these may help to determine the possibilities.
You may even use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option many times, for example once when the hard disks are (surely) active, for example immediately after system startup - and one later, when one or more hard disk drives surely already entered sleeping mode - so then it is possible to check if there is any (even minimal) sign of difference in the driver response - which can be used as the real indicator of the power status.