SpinRite

[shaveice]

just came across this software program and wonder if anyone here (like craig) have any comments about it?

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

i'm not experiencing any problems now but it claims to be both a preventive and recovery tool. sounds interesting but it'd be nice to hear from those who are familiar with it (and perhaps other similar programs).

thanks.

[Nords]

Re: SpinRite

just came across this software program and wonder if anyone here (like craig) have any comments about it?
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
i'm not experiencing any problems now but it claims to be both a preventive and recovery tool. sounds interesting but it'd be nice to hear from those who are familiar with it (and perhaps other similar programs).
thanks.

I've been using it for years. Wonderful software, although I think it's declining in popularity/utility as hard drives decline in price.

Steve Gibson is one of the last human beings in the universe to program in assembly language (Ryan?) and his programs are incredibly compact. He was one of the first to ID/diagnose Iomega's "click of death" problems with their Zip drives, back when the company was lying/denying and everyone thought he was a disgruntled nutcase. He hates Windows APIs and security holes with a passion. He also takes the time to dig into the technical details of hard drive data storage that most of us never care about, so he can revive a drive almost from the dead. If a drive's SMART is giving out warnings, or if the drive performance is visibly declining, then SpinRite works great.

Having said that, today's hard drives are practically disposable items and SpinRite is becoming a niche tool for the hardcore user. I haven't used it on my new PC's drive yet and I don't seem to have a reason to bother with it. (I don't even take the time to defrag anymore.) I don't store anything on our laptop that isn't backed up to a flash drive and/or an external HD. SpinRite has its uses but most people either use flash drives for their really important/portable stuff or they're not the kind of people to care about backups/maintenance until it's way too late.

I think your money is better spent on a good backup drive (external or flash) and backup software (or just free SynchToy). If you end up working on a lot of family's/friend's/neighbor's PCs then Spinrite is a good way to set their drive's baseline performance (defrag and refresh the bit signatures) so that you know what you're starting with the next time they ask for help. And it's a lot of fun to tweak various parameters or to watch SpinRite do its stuff. But it's more important to do regular backups, and if your hard drive dies then the SpinRite money could go toward the purchase of something bigger/faster/cheaper than the dead drive.

I love the hardcore geek snark attitude of Steve's website, and I value his security software even more than SpinRite. It's worth using his diagnostic security tools to put your desktop through its paces. But I don't think I'll ever get around to buying the latest version of SpinRite.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: SpinRite

Like Nords says, back up often. SpinRite is a great tool for technicians for data recovery, however for most people it is unnecessary until that dreaded day.

SpinRite will attempt to determine data by reading that defective sector thousands of times to determine the probability of what that data was, however it is only a statistical guess and in the realm of digital bit-streams, one bit off and the whole thing is wrong, so there is no sure-fire way of 100%data recovery.

Also SpinRite will write to another part of that "crashed" hard drive. Rewriting can be almost as difficult as reading bad sectors with no guarantee the rewrite will be 100% readable later on.

It is a software-based data recovery program that does not require dissecting the hard drive and running it as a secondary drive on a bench set up, and that's what makes SpinRite so wonderful. Run the program in a DOS format and Voila it's done (so to speak). But it's not always that simple.

I've seen computers come in where the owner says the hard drive "crashed" when in reality the OS crashed. Data recovery is fairly simple and straightforward by using a bootable OS on a removable storage device or a CD/DVD. I've recovered data by using a Windows Bootable CD and pulling data to an external storage device. You can use some of the free Linux bootable CD's to do the same.

But once the physical portion of the hard drive is compromised (motor or platter seized, read/write head literally impacting the disk) there is very little chance of data recovery. Even SpinRite requires the disk to be spinning in order to read the magnetic surface of the disk. It will be able to read "around" the damaged portion of the disk where a read/write head crashed into it...provided the read/write head wasn't damaged in the course of impact.

Would I buy it? Possibly to use with my arsenal of data recovery options, but in my experiences with crashed hard drives, if the BIOS cannot recognize a damaged hard drive, not even SpinRite can perform it's miracles.

[shaveice]

Re: SpinRite

thanks for the helpful info; makes sense; will consider the ups and downs of paying for a copy of the program vs. just buying external drives to back up stuff.

very helpful; thanks!