Hard Disk Sentinel Help - Disk icons

On the icons of the logical disks Hard Disk Sentinel constantly displays the status of these disks (health status which can be good, acceptable and bad) and the amount of used space. This way in any application (for example, Windows Explorer) the current status can be easily read.

This option is especially useful if two or more hard disks are installed or if the status window cannot be displayed. The used space is displayed in 16 different steps. As used space on the logical drive is increased, the band turns yellow and then red.

Note: The used space display depends on the free disk space threshold setting. It is possible to configure the free space thresholds differently for each logical disks. If a higher free space threshold is configured, the band will reach yellow or red areas sooner.

A symbol according the hard disk health is displayed at the lower right corner of the icons. By default, this symbol can be a green tick if the health is better than 50%. Between 25% and 50% a yellow exclamation mark is displayed and below 25% a red X is displayed on the icons of logical disks. Of course these threshold values can be configured.

Note: the health symbol is displayed only on disk drives where it is possible to detect the current health status. On logical disks associated with other drives (for example pendrives with no status information) and on remote drives it is possible to display used space information only. (This option is disabled by default, it can be enabled on the disk control configuration panel). The health information is not displayed under Windows 98/98SE/ME.

To display the current status of the disks, it is required the periodically examine the status (health, used space) of the disks. Slower devices or drives (for example, some type of card readers or network drives) may require more time for detection and this may increase response time of the application or slow down the system. In these cases, this option should be partially or totally disabled on the affected drives. This can be configured on the disk control configuration panel.

Hard Disk Sentinel should be active (running) to display the health symbol and the used space on the logical disk icons. If it is not running, these extra information cannot be displayed.