bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) (08/16/88)
Has anyone used Gibson's "SpinRite"?
Having run the recently posted "spintest" program, it appears that my
Seagate ST238-R has been formatted with a suboptimal interleave factor
of 4. ("spintest" claimed it took 18 revs to read a track! Bleah!)
"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format
while optimizing interleave.
This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59
list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers.
Alternatively, does anyone know of any other software which performs
this task?
Thanks,
--
Bob Weissman
Internet: bob@acornrc.uucp
UUCP: ...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | pyramid }!acornrc!bob
Arpanet: bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.govsimcha@humming.UUCP (Simcha Lerner) (08/16/88)
In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: >Has anyone used Gibson's "SpinRite"? > >Having run the recently posted "spintest" program, it appears that my >Seagate ST238-R has been formatted with a suboptimal interleave factor >of 4. ("spintest" claimed it took 18 revs to read a track! Bleah!) This figure is hard to believe, since the theoretical worst case for normal MFM hard drives is 17 rotations. (Unless it is counting the 1/2 rotation (on average) latency to find the first sector.) >"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format >while optimizing interleave. > >This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59 >list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers. I have used a similar product (see below) and I have always noticed a 40-50% increase in throughput when I change a drive from an interleave of 3 (typical factory default) to 2 (a good number for fast ATs). >Alternatively, does anyone know of any other software which performs >this task? Phoenix Technologies Ltd. has had an OEM product out for 1-1/2 years called Control-386. It provides many very userful utilities that enhance the speed, performance and compatibility of most '386 machines. As a part of the setup, they have a routine the determines the optimum interleave and the current interleave, and then performs a low level format while (optionally) saving the data in place. (The last version that I was familiar with did not require a '386 in order to run the format utilities.) This is not as hard as it sounds, since the ST-506 type drives allow track by track formatting. (You read off a track worth of data into ram, format the track with the proper interleave, then restore the data. As a safety factor, you skip any tracks with a bad sector, so as to avoid moving the bad spot to a different sector.) Unless your machine came with Control/386 (or you have a friend who can lend you his installation diskette), SpinRite sounds like a good deal, given that there are some other utilities that are supposed to help prolong the life of your data on the drive included in the product. >Thanks, >-- >Bob Weissman >Internet: bob@acornrc.uucp >UUCP: ...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | pyramid }!acornrc!bob >Arpanet: bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.gov Simcha Lerner harvard!humming!simcha ^^^^^^^ (not bbn) All opinions are my own, but you are welcome to share them.
browning@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Craig Browning) (08/16/88)
In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: >This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59 >list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers. >Alternatively, does anyone know of any other software which performs >this task? >Thanks, >Bob Weissman Another program I posted which I didn't see show up is ILEAVE16, now reportedly ILEAVE17, or iau.exe, which measures your interleaf and gets the best interleaf, and will do a non-destructive re-format. I would exercise caution if I had anything non-standard, e.g. RLL. Good luck finding it, it seems to ba around a lot of places or maybe someone else can post it. Craig
pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) (08/16/88)
In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: >Has anyone used Gibson's "SpinRite"? > >"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format >while optimizing interleave. > >This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59 >list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers. I have used it. It does everything he claims. It is wonderful. It is better than wonderful. It also has some problems [he doesn't make claims about those now, does he? :-)] The fixable ones should be fixed in the next version, coming out in a while (don't hold your breath): 1) First use of the program takes pretty long (several-many hours), especially if your disk has lots of bad sectors. My worst case: used it on a 10MB drive that had been through a fire, then used for several years. It had >5MB of bad sectors marked. Took >24 hours to check and eliminate all bad sectors. It has worked perfectly ever since (many months- I believe since January or so). 2) When it finds a non-correctable bad sector in the middle of a file that you haven't used in a long time, it fixes the problem, giving you as much of the data back from the sector as is possible. BUT IT DOESN'T TELL YOU WHICH FILE HAD BAD DATA. That's left as an exercise for the user. This will be fixed. In the meantime, it is better than nothing. And perhaps running a Norton Disk Test first would answer those questions. 3) It doesn't understand partitions >32MB (SpeedStore, etc). To be fixed. In spite of these problems, this is my current favorite for "Utility program that I wish I had written". Pete -- OOO __| ___ Peter Holzmann, Octopus Enterprises OOOOOOO___/ _______ USPS: 19611 La Mar Court, Cupertino, CA 95014 OOOOO \___/ UUCP: {hpda,pyramid}!octopus!pete ___| \_____ Phone: 408/996-7746
pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) (08/17/88)
This article resolves some misconceptions presented in a couple of articles posted about SpinRite. I've used it, and understand what it does pretty well, so I'll attempt to clear things up: In article <246@humming.UUCP> simcha@humming.UUCP (Simcha Lerner) writes: >In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: >>Having run the recently posted "spintest" program, it appears that my >>Seagate ST238-R has been formatted with a suboptimal interleave factor >>of 4. ("spintest" claimed it took 18 revs to read a track! Bleah!) > >This figure is hard to believe, since the theoretical worst case for >normal MFM hard drives is 17 rotations. (Unless it is counting the >1/2 rotation (on average) latency to find the first sector.) An ST-238 (or almost any other "30 MB drive") is really a 20MB drive running with an RLL controller. Therefore, it has around 26 sectors. I've actually seen an ST-238 take 28 rotations to read a full track. It just means that the interleave is optimally bad, and the controller is getting confused every once in a while on top of it all. With a well- implemented controller, it is true that the worst you could get is N rotations (1 rotation per sector). >>"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format >>while optimizing interleave. >[Mentions Phoenix version that does this at setup time] >[Craig, in another article, mentioned ILEAVE16/17 and iau.exe] The problem with most 'non-destructive' low level formatters I've seen is that they don't do sufficient testing of the disk, and can't handle errors that are found if they do perform testing. This isn't something to worry about if you are working with an unused disk, since you have no data to lose. It also isn't particularly worrisome if your disk has been low-level formatted recently, because the problems I'm about to mention are mostly due to long-term changes that occur after low-level reformatting. One of the trickiest problems to deal with is that over time, disk head alignment can change slightly (the head is no longer centered over the track). If this shift gets bad enough, you will see lots of bad sectors showing up. Low-level reformatting fixes the problem, since it rewrites the sector header information, thus putting all the data back under the center of the head. The trouble occurs when there's a defect that used to be just far enough off the original track alignment that it didn't show up in original disk testing, but that *will* be a problem after the track is reformatted. If the reformatter doesn't know what to do with the data if a bad sector is found while reformatting, you will be in trouble. Avoiding existing marked bad sectors is a nice idea, but doesn't take care of this problem. Other than the interleave optimization, the nicest thing about SpinRite is that it does extensive surface testing. And it knows enough about bad sectors that it can move data to a good spot on the disk. AND, it can return sectors previously marked 'bad' to normal use, if the defect is no longer a problem. While I'm on a roll, perhaps I should mention some examples of why sectors marked 'bad' are probably not really bad after all: 1) Most common reason for 'bad sector' is that the head is off-track and the sector header can't be read. New low level format solves this problem completely. 2) If a defect is actually in the space between sectors on a track, there's no reason to mark a sector bad. 3) If a defect was in the center of the track before, and the heads have shifted, it may not affect the track any more. Pete -- OOO __| ___ Peter Holzmann, Octopus Enterprises OOOOOOO___/ _______ USPS: 19611 La Mar Court, Cupertino, CA 95014 OOOOO \___/ UUCP: {hpda,pyramid}!octopus!pete ___| \_____ Phone: 408/996-7746
leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) (08/19/88)
In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
<"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format
<while optimizing interleave.
<
<Alternatively, does anyone know of any other software which performs
<this task?
SpeedStor can do this too. Though it does take a while (around an
hour for an ST-251...
SpeedStor also has the great advantage that in all the testing I've done
it's suggested interleave when formatting an HD has always proved to be
optimal for the machine/drive combo in question.
--
Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) (08/23/88)
In article <313@octopus.UUCP>, pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) writes: > In article <989@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: > >Has anyone used Gibson's "SpinRite"? > > > >"SpinRite" claims it can perform a non-destructive low-level format > >while optimizing interleave. > > > >This feature in itself would probably make this product worth the $59 > >list price, assuming it really speeds up my disk transfers. > > I have used it. It does everything he claims. It is wonderful. It is better > than wonderful. Does anyone have a NAME and ADDRESS (or even, heaven forfend, a TELEPHONE NUMBER -- or even TELEX or FAX NUMBER) of the company that puts out this product? It really burns me up to see rave reviews of products without a clue about how to find it - I have just spent a fruitless afternoon calling a bunch of mail-order places and going through both my morgue of magazines and the local newspaper's morgue at the public library trying to find SOMEONE SOMEWHERE who knew where and how to get a copy of this. Thanks muchly -- Bruce C. Wright
mvolo@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Michael R. Volow) (08/23/88)
Request how to obtain SpinRite. Would anyone with this information please post it for all to see. Thanks. Michael R. Volow 919 286 0411, page beeper #550 Dept. of Psychiatry mvolo@ecsvax.UUCP Durham Vet Admin Medical Center Durham, N.C. 27705
bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) (08/23/88)
In article <2415@rti.UUCP>, bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) writes: > Does anyone have a NAME and ADDRESS (or even, heaven forfend, a TELEPHONE > NUMBER -- or even TELEX or FAX NUMBER) of the company that puts out this > product? [...] I guess I get to answer my own question. I finally found a reference to the product and the company: In the July 1988 issue of Computer Shopper, p. 281 there is a review of SpinRite. The product can be obtained for $59 (plus, probably, a shipping fee - I don't know what the standard shipping fee is since we ordered it shipped UPS red label) from: Gibson Research Corporation 22991 LaCadena Laguna Hills, CA 92653 714-830-2200 Bruce C. Wright
bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) (08/24/88)
In article <2415@rti.UUCP>, bcw@rti.UUCP (Bruce Wright) writes: > Does anyone have a NAME and ADDRESS (or even, heaven forfend, a TELEPHONE > NUMBER -- or even TELEX or FAX NUMBER) of the company that puts out this > product? It really burns me up to see rave reviews of products without a > clue about how to find it - I have just spent a fruitless afternoon calling > a bunch of mail-order places and going through both my morgue of magazines > and the local newspaper's morgue at the public library trying to find > SOMEONE SOMEWHERE who knew where and how to get a copy of this. Hey, don't get burned up; all you have to do is ask. Gibson Research Corporation P.O. Box 6024 Irvine, CA 92716 (714) 854-1520 SpinRite is "$59 plus $1.50 shipping and handling. Send check or request UPS COD. Credit card orders cannot be accepted at this time. California residents must include 6% state sales tax." -- Bob Weissman Internet: bob@acornrc.uucp UUCP: ...!{ ames | decwrl | oliveb | pyramid }!acornrc!bob Arpanet: bob%acornrc.uucp@ames.arc.nasa.gov
jdg@moss.ATT.COM (08/25/88)
From postnews Wed Aug 24 17:47:14 1988 > Does anyone have a NAME and ADDRESS (or even, heaven forfend, a TELEPHONE > NUMBER -- or even TELEX or FAX NUMBER) of the company that puts out this > > Thanks muchly, Bruce C. Wright SpinRite is published by Gibson Research Corp. P.O. Box 6024 Irvine, CA 92716 714-854-1520 Please let us know how you like it. Dave Garland
nts0302@dsacg3.UUCP (Bob Fisher) (08/25/88)
Spinrite is advertised on page 57 of the Aug 22 edition of INFO WORLD. The ad gives their address as Gibson Research Corporation 22991 La Cadena Laguna Hills, CA 92653 (714)830-2200 Price is $59.00 plus $1.50 postage and handling. Sales tax for California residents. No credit cards. -- Bob Fisher (osu-cis!dsacg1!bfisher) 614-238-9071 (Autovon 850-9071) From the Internet: bfisher%dsacg1.uucp@daitc.arpa US Defense Logistics Agency Systems Automation Center DSAC-TSX, Box 1605, Columbus, OH 43216-5002