Veteran drive monitor Hard Disk Sentinel has just been updated to version 5.0, the first major release in more than a year.

The Professional build gets a new “Repair disk drive” method which scans for weak sectors and forces the hard drive to stabilize problems, or reallocate sectors if necessary.

Experts can now also initiate a manual repair of sector directly from the disk viewer.

All HDS versions get more control over the testing process, with options to set a custom pattern for disk writes and a maximum retry count.

HDS Pro can now run surface tests on multiple hard disks, and every build has an option to automatically save the test reports (text, images and logs).

Thorough, detailed tests could pick up weak drive sectors before they fail

Set up a command to launch on an alert, and HDS Pro now gives it access to useful data via environment variables: the alert time and type, computer name, the affected drive, and general threshold, partition and health information.

All Hard Drive Sentinel builds also have an option to log alerts to the Windows Event Log, maybe providing another way to launch a custom task via Task Scheduler.

Elsewhere, there’s much-improved support for industrial hardware, including InnoDisk, Delkin and MagicRAM memory cards, LTO tape drives and more. New high DPI support will resolve some display issues, and there are plenty of other bug fixes, too.

Hard Disk Sentinel is available in Standard ($19.50), Professional ($29.95) and Enterprise ($199.50) editions. Register and you’re covered for life.

Hard Disk Sentinel still runs on anything from Windows 95 up, including in Safe Mode, without administrator rights and (in service mode) without a user being logged in.