Hard Disk Sentinel Help - Configuration: Disk control

Hard Disk Sentinel continuously examine the used and free space of the logical drives (partitions). By this information, it is possible to display the amount of used space on the drive icons. Moreover, a sign according the current disk health is displayed on the drive icons.

Modify default hard disk icons: by this option, it is possible to globally enable/disable the use of the extended hard disk icons. If the option is disabled, the original Windows drive icons are used. If enabled, the extended icons are used: the amount of used space and the health icons are displayed on the icons. These icons are displayed in all applications, including the Windows Explorer.

Monitor space on network disks: it is possible to examine the free space information on remote disks also and automatically update this information in the logical drive panel of the main window.

Change default system icon for network disks: after the detection, the icon of the network (remote) drives will reflect the amount of used space.

Monitor space on removable disks: it is possible to examine the free space information on removable disks (for example, pendrives, external hard disks, card readers) also and automatically update this information in the logical drive panel of the main window.

Change default system icon for removable disks: after the detection, the icon of the removable drives will reflect the amount of used space on them.

Note: on remote and most removable drives it is not possible to detect S.M.A.R.T. information. This way the icon represent only used/free space information but not health.

Note: checking space on remote and removable drives may be slow (especially if a network drive is not accessible or if the card reader has no card inserted). It is recommended to use these options only if they do not reduce the performance of the system and the application.

It is possible to specify which drives should be excluded from the disk space check and which drives should keep the default disk icon. Please list the drive letters (without : or any spaces) into the corresponding field.

Note: Hard Disk Sentinel can detect and modify the icons only if it is running. If the application is closed, the previous drive icons are displayed (original system icons or modified icons if a third party application modified them).

Note: some operating systems (for example Windows XP SP1) may not display the correct hard disk icons. Please upgrade to the latest service pack if you encounter this problem.

The Disk icon set option is used to specify the style of hard disk icons (XP or Vista/7 style) to use in Windows Explorer and in other software showing drive icons. These icons reflect the hard disk health status and the used space.
Starting from version 4.10, it is possible to load and use external icon image packages (.HDZ files) and get further information about the icon package (view information supplied by the publisher of the icon package) display an example image, showing the possible icons.

Disable detection of USB and SCSI drives: this option is available only for compatibility issues, to disable detection of extended information about special devices. This may include also hard disks/SSDs connected to RAID controllers, configured to RAID arrays or just devices used by some hard disk controllers. In most cases, this option is NOT required as it may prevent detection of hard disk status at all. It may be required only when some (especially older) card readers used as they may respond very slowly to the software. If this happens, please use Report -> Send test report to developer option.