Hard Disk Monitoring

While upgrading a hard drive, I accidentally got a SATA instead of an IDE. The computer didn't have onboard SATA, so I got a SATA PCI card. The drive works fine, but the drive isn't being monitored by HD Sentinel. Are there certain SATA PCI cards that are known to work? Is this something that can be fixed in the future?

Yes, it is possible that the driver or the firmware of a controller does not provide hard disk information as it should.
Not only SATA, but some IDE controllers are also affected. Please check the hardware compatibility page: http://www.hdsentinel.com/compat.php for more details about known controllers.

It would be nice to know the exact type and model of the disk controller. If possible, please select the "Report" menu "Send test report to developer" option to send a complete report about the current configuration so I can check and recommend a solution (if possible).
For example, you may need an updated firmware (non-RAID if possible) or updated driver. It depends also on the current operating system (eg. many controllers still do not have correct Vista or 64 bit OS drivers).

Because of this problem is related to the driver, I'm not sure I can improve this situation. If you check the hard disk with other software which can read SMART info (for example, Everest) it may also not display any such information. However, I can verify this in the report, and if possible, of course I'll add support for your controller.

If there is no better solution available, you may try the DOS version of HD Sentinel: http://www.hdsentinel.com/hdsdos.php
By using the boot disk, you may get information about the hard disk (because there is no problematic drivers loaded under DOS).

RChadwick wrote:While upgrading a hard drive, I accidentally got a SATA instead of an IDE. The computer didn't have onboard SATA, so I got a SATA PCI card. The drive works fine, but the drive isn't being monitored by HD Sentinel. Are there certain SATA PCI cards that are known to work? Is this something that can be fixed in the future?

Thanks for the response. I have sent the report. Unfortunately, I don't believe there was an updated driver. I usually ignore the disks, and download the latest from the manufacturer, but there was none in this case. I believe it was a SIIG card.

Thanks for the report. It seems this card provides very few information to the software (even the hard disk model ID was not detected which is very rare). As I see, it is based on an Initio Inic 1620 (I see its device identifier in the report). I'll try to get a such card and examine it with more details.

RChadwick wrote:Thanks for the response. I have sent the report. Unfortunately, I don't believe there was an updated driver. I usually ignore the disks, and download the latest from the manufacturer, but there was none in this case. I believe it was a SIIG card.