Hard Disk Monitoring

Hi,

we ran a surface read disk test and HD Sentinel took the disk during the test offline.
Its an USB-connected hard disk. Is that by design? Can any kind of surface test only be done offline?

Thanks,
Thomas

By default, Hard Disk Sentinel attempts to lock the disk drive for exclusive use: to prevent other software (or Windows itself) accessing the disk drive during the test.
This way it can accurately measure disk performance during the test and can show if a specific data area is slower than expected.

If you select Disk menu -> Surface test function, then in this new window (before starting the test) you can select the Configuration tab and uncheck the Lock drive during test (unmount volumes) option, then this does not happen and the disk drive remains online during the test.

There are some tests (eg. write tests) which always require this - as they can't be performed when the disk is online. Read test or the Disk Repair test can run without locking the hard disk drive.
This is independent from the disk connection: same as on USB and SATA (or SAS/NVMe etc).

Awesome, thanks for the explation.