Hard Disk Sentinel Help - Configuration: Message settings

When a problem is found, Hard Disk Sentinel can send or display alert. On this page, it is possible to configure the types of such alerts. Any combination of the options are possible. Note: at least one alert type should be selected.

Send e-mail: in case of a problem, Hard Disk Sentinel will send an e-mail with the problem description. The e-mail will be delivered as configured on the e-mail configuration page. It is possible to dial the default internet connection before sending (it may be neccessary if using dial-up or DSL modem) and it is possible to close (hang) the connection after sending the message. Note: if close connection option is enabled but the connection was already estabilished before sending a mail (the computer was already connected), the connection will NOT be closed.

The user may choose the e-mail type. This can be full HTML report (including images but still less than 50 kbytes for one hard disk), full text report (plain text only) or brief text report. The latter is very small and quick - useful if the message should be delivered via an e-mail -> SMS gateway. Note: the selected report type will be sent as a daily status e-mail. Also the selected report type (HTML or text) will be saved or sent when the user clicks the corresponding quick button in the main window.

It is possible to configure the elements to include in the detailed text or HTML report (if using the registered version). Note: regardless of the configured elements, the XML report contains all sections.

Send message to remote computer: The alert can be sent to any computer in the network (just like when using the NET SEND command). To send and receive such messages, the messenger service needs to run on both the sender and the recipient computers. By using the Select button, it is possible to choose the recipient computer from the local network. This can be slow on larger networks and may be faster to specify the computer name directly (without \\ prefix). It is possible to send a test message to the remote computer to verify the connection.

Important: if the remote computer is not accessible (it does not respond because of a network error or a power failure), Hard Disk Sentinel automatically re-sends the message(s) in every 5 minutes until the successful delivery (in the current session). If the user re-start the application, this re-send procedure will be cancelled.

Note: the messenger service supports only small messages (up to 254 characters). Usually from this info, the recipient (in most cases, the administrator) can read only the problem description and the sender computer. In such cases, the admininstrator should examine the sender computer for problems. It is recommended to check HDS_problem_log.txt file first in the folder of Hard Disk Sentinel because it has information about previous alerts. It is possible that some (non standard ASCII) characters are displayed incorrectly in the delivered message.

Display message on screen: by using this option, the message will be displayed on the screen. Optionally, a custom message can be displayed before the problem description. Hard Disk Sentinel reads this custom message from a text file before displaying the alert. It is recommended on computers which are not connected to the network and the remote send methods are not possible. For example, a custom message can be "Please call administrator on phone XX-XXXXX-XXX and tell him the following information:".

Add to Windows event log: the alert added to Windows (application) Event Log. This may help administrators/tools fetching the Windows event log to get notification about the alerts and issues (registered version only).

Run external application or batch file: upon alert, an external configured application (or BAT file) started. It is possible to select (or manually specify the command line) and select if the external application should run "invisible", without displaying its window (registered version only).

In the external application (or BAT file) the following environment variables available, pre-set by Hard Disk Sentinel:
    HDS_TimeStamp : date and time of the actual alert in fixed format yyyymmdd hhmmss
    HDS_TimeStampClean : date and time of the alert in user-friendly format (current Windows regional setting)
    HDS_Host : current host (computer) name
    HDS_Alert : the alert (eg. Overheat)
    HDS_Disk : affected disk(s)
    HDS_Threshold : threshold configured (contain Celsius/Fahrenheit or % symbols)
    HDS_ThresholdValue : threshold configured (only the number)
    HDS_Health : generic health information of all drives
    HDS_Partition : generic partition information of all drives
    HDS_LowestDiskHealth: the lowest health % value of all drives

Note: the daily status e-mail can be e-mail only, regardless of the selected message type(s) on this page.