Spinrite HDD Utility

[Noahtuck]

Anyone ever heard of or used this before ?

SpinRite prevents mass storage systems from crashing or warns the user of pending catastrophe. If SpinRite is not used until after a crash, it skillfully picks up all the pieces, recovers your data, and puts everything back together again.

http://www.grc.com/sroverview.htm

I've never used anything like this & was wondering if anyone has tried it, or any opinions, or other similar software.

[mazinz]

amazing software and worth every expensive penny

I had a dead drive that nothing was able to read to get items off. Spinrite is a repair, and rebuilder. Even if you have errors every now and then it does a better job than checkdisc (though a much, much longer operation) and should be run on occasion. Spinrite even goes as far as fixing connection problems (in my then) IDE cable connected to the drive as well. Excellent stuff

Back to the point. Spinrite did see my dead drive and I set it up to do what it could to recover/rebuild/repair any clusters or anything. I let it run for 15 hours. I let the drive rest and sure enough the Acronis software I was using to retrieve my data off of it, could now see and access the drive thanks to the spinrite fixing.

it is a very good app for general all around health for your hard drive

If you have the funds for it, get it

[TimA-C]

It's pretty good. I've had and used the last two versions and it's got me out of trouble on a number of occasions. It won't always save the day but it's definitely a useful tool to have in the toolbox if you deal with a number of computers. I can't remember how much I paid for it but I certainly don't remember thinking it was expensive.

[mgh]

Remember it to be an old old program. Wikipedia confirms

SpinRite is a computer software program for scanning magnetic data storage devices such as hard disks, recovering data from them and refreshing their surfaces. It is proprietary and commercial software written by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation. The first version was released in 1988. Version 6, still current as of June 2009, was released in 2004. [1]. SpinRite may be run from a bootable floppy disk, USB flash drive or CD-ROM on a PC-compatible computer, independent of the operating system installed on the host computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

[TimA-C]

So? Have hard drives changed much since 2004?

[bendixG15]

SpinRite gets mixed reviews.

The last time I looked at it........... and yes it has been around for many years with no general acceptance.

It performs a series of tests to try to determine if your drive is failing.

Unfortunateley, Spinrite is unable to test every which way that a drive can fail. Hence if your failure mode is one that Spinrite tests, then you get a warning and you are happy.

And then, if your drive is failing in a mode that spinrite can't test, then you get no warning and you become a sad puppy.

And thats what I remember.

[Jim44]

I've been using it for a couple of years now, as maintenance on the several computers/HDD in the house (6 at last count ). Fortunately, I've not needed it's recovery feature.

[fatbloke88]

I've used it a couple of times when my pc wouldn't boot,it can take a fair time to run the recovery program but it will normally get me out of trouble so its worth the wait.Worth the money in my opinion

[Nelson37]

Haven't used Spinrite for well over 10 years. It's original purpose had to do with changing the sector interleave to a smaller number for performance reasons, this was pre-IDE drive standard.

Back then, it was a solid piece of software, I had no idea it still served a useful purpose. Haven't run into a tech using it for a long, long time. Haven't even heard anyone mention it since the MFM drive days.

I do recall that it cost more than a new hard drive does today. Repair on a $50.00 critical part is a non-starter. Replace it. I use GetDataBack for recovery of, well, data.

[lingyi]

I've been using Spinrite for several years now and it's well worth the price if you have several hard drives or need to recover data. I don't have the program running right now so these are my best recollections of the settings.

It has several modes, the most powerful settings (settings 4 & 5) will do a surface check and read and rewrite every sector of your HD to enable data recovery and mark non-recoverable sectors. I've used it to restore several unbootable HDs for data recovery. Setting 5 will possibly even restore sectors that Windows marked as "bad", giving you back HD space that you thought was gone for good. The lower settings, 1-3 will only check that the sectors can be read, but won't do any recovery of bad sectors.

Fair warning, settings 4 & 5 can take a long time (several days in one case) to do a recovery. It will continously attempt to read the bad sector until it determines that it absolutely can't be recovered. You may have to open the case or run a fan to cool the drive (I would open the case and leave a portable fan blowing directly on the drive) as the program will stop if the drive overheats (it senses the drive's temp).

On a good drive (i.e. no bad sectors) it should just take several hours. I run it on my main system every few months just to make sure everything is okay and use it to test old HD's before I put them into my "fun" builds (i.e. bringing old systems back to life).

One other major warning. I suspect that it may kill a really, really flakey drive (i.e it was ready to die anyway) during testing because of heat or the constant thrashing of the drive mechanics (as mentioned above, it will keep trying to read a bad sector for hours until it finally gives up and marks it as unrecoverable).

Hope this helps!

[edDV]

Steve Gibson, Spinrite author, has a long list of podcasts with Leo Laporte "Security Now". These are available from iPod podcasts or TWiT.

[Noahtuck]

I'm still debating on trying it out....

I thought it might be good just for a preventive measure utility but i have read that it taxes your drive so much that if it does have problems it can actually kill it

I might hold off until i have a drive that is really messed up.

[edDV]

Spinrite is a recovery tool. I doubt it does harm.

First thing recovery experts do is clone the target drive and then work on the clone.

Like doctors, first rule is do minimal harm when seeking a cure.

Steve Gibson will respond to e-mail at grc. At least he has in the past.

[Video Head]

Steve has been around for some time and is regarded as a trusted source for computer security and data integrity in some circles.

I thought Spinrite was for the "click of death" with Zip drives. I guess it migrated to hard drives?

[edDV]

Been around many years... since 1988.
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite