GSmartControl vs Hard Disk Sentinel
GSmartControl
gsmartcontrol.shaduri.devHard Disk Sentinel
hdsentinel.comSide by side
| Figure | GSmartControl | Hard Disk Sentinel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 7 |
| Spec score · Hardware Diagnostic Software | 8.4 (#2) | 8.3 (#3) |
| Spec score · Disk Diagnostic Software | 8.4 (#3) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Spec score · Disk Health Monitoring Software | 8.4 (#4) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Purpose | GSmartControl is a graphical interface for smartctl that lets users inspect SMART data and run drive tests. | Hard Disk Sentinel monitors, diagnoses, tests, and reports on hard disk and SSD health, performance degradation, and failures. |
| Support | Users are directed to report bugs through the GitHub issue tracker after consulting the troubleshooting page. | Registration includes free life-of-product technical support and help. |
Plans
Hard Disk Sentinel
- DOSFree
- LinuxFree
- TrialFree
- Standard$22, paid once
- Professional$33, paid once
- Professional Family$59, paid once
- Enterprise$219.50, paid once
In their own words
GSmartControl
GSmartControl is a graphical interface for smartctl, used to inspect drive SMART data and run tests. It displays drive identity, capabilities, attributes and device statistics, and automatically highlights anomalies. Users can enable or disable SMART and adjust global or per-drive smartctl options. Saved smartctl output can be opened as a read-only virtual device. The software supports ATA drives, including SATA and PATA, and NVMe drives, plus some devices behind USB bridges and selected RAID controllers. SCSI and SAS drives are not supported, though some information about them may appear. GSmartControl is free software under the GNU General Public License version 3. Downloads include Linux packages, Windows installers and portable archives, FreeBSD ports, macOS packages and source code. smartmontools is a runtime requirement, but official Windows packages include the required software. Useful operations require root or Administrator privileges because operating systems restrict direct hardware access. Supported systems listed include Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, macOS and Solaris; QNX support is described as untested.
Hard Disk Sentinel
Hard Disk Sentinel has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.