2009/1/26 James Courtier-Dutton <james.dutton@???>
> 2009/1/26 Andy Smith <andy@???>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:52:52AM +0000, Russell Gadd wrote:
> >> I've had good experience with Steve Gibson's Spinrite. There's a ton of
> >> testimonials here
> >> http://www.grc.com/sr/testimonials.htm
> >>
> >> This guy is one of the best, I would trust everything he does.
> >
> > Really?
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer)#Controversy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_%28computer_programmer%29#Controversy>
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andy
> >
>
> spinrite will not help at all with modern computer HDs.
> The IDE controllers hide the actual disk "low level" formatting from
> the PC for very good reasons.
> spinrite might have been good for the older floppy discs and RLL disk
> drives, but is not any use really with modern HDs.
> In fact, spinrite can seriously cause much more damage to an already
> partially damaged disc surface.
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@???
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
James, I was going to ignore this post but I was concerned that this
misinformation would be to the detriment of Stephen who asked the original
question, so I posted the text on Steve Gibson's Spinrite users newsgroup
and received 3 replies yesterday, all of which were illuminating and I can
do no better than just copying them here, whether you respond or not is
immaterial to me:
First response:
>From http://www.grc.com/srfeatures.htm
"Direct Hardware Interaction with Hard Disk Drives and Controllers:
Unlike any other disk utility, SpinRite interfaces directly to the hard
disk system's hardware, rather than working through the system's
operating system or BIOS. This allows SpinRite to immediately determine
the location of any surface defect after a single incident of error,
rather than requiring multiple reoccurrences. SpinRite's hardware-level
interconnection also allows it to interface with the various functional
extensions of the IDE/CAM/ATA drive standards - including LBA mode
drives - and to manage the extended ECC error correction available in
modern devices. SpinRite selectively disables and enables a drive's
read caching, write caching, read-ahead buffering, on-the-fly sector
relocation, on-the-fly error correction, dynamic servo thermal
re-equalization, early and late ECC error correction, and other
advanced features in modern drives. No other disk utility has ever done
any of this, even though it results in tremendous data recovery and
drive maintenance benefits."
>From http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/utilities/spinrite_v6.html
"SpinRite 6 interacts directly with magnetic storage media at a level
below any installed operating system. This version is able to operate
on all Windows XP NTFS formats in addition to all DOS FAT, all Linux
file systems, Novell, Macintosh (if temporarily moved into a PC) or
anything else. SpinRite can also be used to repair and recover the hard
drive from a TiVo personal video recorder. SpinRite originally
introduced the concept of non-destructive low-level reformatting and
sector interleave optimization all of which basically means that the
software can read, analyze, correct then rewrite every tiny bit of data
on a hard drive, re-establishing the formatting, without losing any
original data, without screwing up your files (they'll work better
actually) or messing up your partitions (they'll work better too), or
fouling up the factory low-level formatting of any hard drive"
>From http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm
"Can SpinRite low-level format my IDE, EIDE, or SCSI drive?
No software of any sort can truly low-level format today's modern
drives. The ability to low-level format hard drives was lost back in
the early 1990's when disc surfaces began incorporating factory written
"embedded servo data". If you have a very old drive that can truly be
low-level reformatted, SpinRite v5.0 will do that for you (which all
v6.0 owners are welcome to download and run anytime). But this is only
possible on very old non-servo based MFM and RLL drives with capacities
up to a few hundred megabytes."
"I thought newer drives didn't need SpinRite?
Not at all. We sell many copies of SpinRite every single day to the
many people who are having serious trouble with their modern drives.
SpinRite is every bit as necessary today as it ever was — maybe even
more so since people store so much valuable personal "media" data on
today's massive drives. The problem is economics: Drive manufacturers
only make hard drives that are "reliable enough" to work "most of the
time". It's just like with Microsoft and Windows. Windows is good
enough that we put up with the annoyances when it breaks. SpinRite is
here to be your tool to pull today's modern drives back from the brink
when they are beginning to misbehave."
HTH,
Matias
