rkim@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (KimBob) (10/24/90)
Hi, I got a hold of a SPINRITE brochure some weeks ago, and I'm wondering if it's really worth buying it. If anyone has experience with SPINRITE, please e-mail yourr opinions to rkim@ucsd.edu. Are there any comparable programs out there? Thanks in advance. -- Robert W. Kim rkim@ucsd.edu University of California, San Diego. Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
mvolo@uncecs.edu (Michael R. Volow) (10/24/90)
[poster asks about Spinrite] I continue to use Spinrite sporadically and it seems to work. However, it takes a long time for a HD of any size 5-20 hours. A faster approach is to make a good backup (or two), do a low level format, fdisk, and restore the files (from Fastback Plus, or tape etc.) I can do the whole process in 60-70 minutes for a 40 meg HD. Of course, with Spinrite, you can recover good portions of tracks nominally marked bad and get extra disk space. Finally, Spinrite created a problem with a disk that had some track 0 problems. It claimed to fix these problems (they were in DOS sector around 50-55 I think) but a few weeks later the disk became unavail- able to DOS. Nothing helped except repeating the low level format without Spinrite, and typing in the bad track map. I'm not sure that you can tell Spinrite to selectively reclaim good sectors of bad track, but not to do this in the system area of the disk. -- Michael Volow, Psychiatry, Durham VA Med Center, Durham NC 27712 919 286 0411 Ext 6933 mvolo@ecsvax.edu
jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (10/25/90)
>[poster asks about Spinrite] > The new Norton Utilities v5.0 includes CALIBRATE, which performs interleave change and low-level format renewal. I haven't had time to try it out yet, and I don't know how it compares to SpinRite. I don't think it restores unnecessarily-marked bad sector to use, but I might be wrong. -- John Dudeck "Nothing is foolproof, because jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu fools are so ingenious." ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 -- quote from PC Mag.
ariel@seer.UUCP (Catherine Hampton) (10/28/90)
In article <13509@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> rkim@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (KimBob) writes: > >I got a hold of a SPINRITE brochure some weeks ago, and I'm >wondering if it's really worth buying it. If anyone has experience >with SPINRITE, please e-mail yourr opinions to rkim@ucsd.edu. Are >there any comparable programs out there? I've used Spinrite and two other programs that do a non-destructive low- level format of MS-DOS hard disks. Spinrite works, yes, although (as with any product that tinkers with your system at that level) it can cause problems on some untested hardware. In my experience, Gibson Research is quite good about testing it, though, and has thorough documentation on what sorts of disks it works on and what disks it doesn't. Further, Spinrite will refuse to run on a disk it doesn't recognize. Another product that does the same thing is Gazelle Systems' Optune. I use Optune on my machines and prefer it, partially because it doesn't attempt to restore factory-bad disk sectors (which can cause problems) and partly because it includes a disk defragmenter as well. Further, Optune's disk defragmenter is by an order of magnitude faster than anything else I've ever tried. It defrags *and packs* my 100 megger in less than four minutes. Norton's Speed Disk takes about fifty minutes to do the same thing. The third product I know has a low-level non-destructive hard disk formatter is the Norton Utilities, version 5.0. I've never tried this utility, so I don't know what to tell you about it. But Norton is a good package to have for other reasons, so maybe you'd like to try it. Cathy _________________________________________________________________ Catherine A. Hampton BITNET: hampton@reed.BITNET CIS: 71601,3130 Fidonet: Cathy H. @ 1:125/32 GEnie: C.HAMPTON3 Internet: hampton@reed.EDU / ariel@seer.COM
fdq@athena.mit.edu (Fred D Quintana) (10/29/90)
I tried spinrite, which seems like a pretty good program, but apparently it doesn't support SCSI drives, of which I have two. Is there any non-destructive low-level formatter out there that does? Fred Quintana
ESR@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Ed Russell) (10/31/90)
In response to: >From: fdq@athena.mit.edu (Fred D Quintana) >Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.apps >Subject: Re: SPINRITE >Message-ID: <1990Oct29.005608.22708@athena.mit.edu> >Date: 29 Oct 90 03:55:52 GMT >In-Reply-To: ariel@seer.UUCP's message of 27 Oct 90 20:36:29 GMT > >I tried spinrite, which seems like a pretty good program, but apparently it >doesn't support SCSI drives, of which I have two. Is there any >non-destructive low-level formatter out there that does? None of the three that I am familiar with (SpinRite, Disk Technician, Optune) will currently work on SCSI. However, the Disk Technician people told me that there will be a version out in November that does. They did say that it will not be selective by track/partition/etc. but will only work on the entire drive. It is not clear whether it will be non-destructive or not but their previous versions have been. Low-level formatting is not the only problem. I have tried several utility diagnostic codes which don't work at all or don't work correctly on SCSI.
ambush@kk4fs.UUCP (Ambush Bug) (11/13/90)
My experience with Spinrite has been: Yes, it reformats your hard disk, but it's so slow that unless you've got a 330 meg job you're backing up onto 360K floppies, it's faster to back it up and then reformat it. Yes, it can recover bad sectors, but they'll go bad again as soon as you write something to them (adios, data!) All in all, it's not worth it. It's slow and clunky. What's more, you can really screw things up with it. Aviod it. It's a "Gee-whiz" program, it's really neat what it can do, but what it can do isn't very useful. Sort of like a virus... Later,
ted@helios.ucsc.edu (Ted Cantrall) (11/14/90)
>Yes, it can recover bad sectors, but they'll go bad again as soon as you >All in all, it's not worth it. It's slow and clunky. What's more, you can >Aviod it. It's a "Gee-whiz" program, it's really neat what it can do, but --------------------------- Interesting what different people have for opinions of the same product. We've been using Spinrite here for years without a single problem.With few exceptions, we use it as the ounce-of-prevention; to avoid bad sector problems. Just last week, however, I "repaired" a 30MB RLL that would not boot 9 out of 10 tries. There was a bad sector in track zero, and Spinrite either (i forget) moved the data or "repaired" the spot. Places that Spinrite finds bad, it marks in the bad-track-table so they cannot be used again. -ted- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ted@helios.ucsc.edu |"He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the W (408)459-2110 |Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness H (408)423-2444 |and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8 (RSV)
bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright) (11/19/90)
In article <Pc9Js3w163w@kk4fs.UUCP>, ambush@kk4fs.UUCP (Ambush Bug) writes: > My experience with Spinrite has been: > Yes, it reformats your hard disk, but it's so slow that unless you've got a > 330 meg job you're backing up onto 360K floppies, it's faster to back it up > and then reformat it. > Yes, it can recover bad sectors, but they'll go bad again as soon as you > write something to them (adios, data!) I disagree. It's true that Spinrite will take longer than backing up and restoring the disk, but it saves having to feed floppies the whole time. You can run it overnight and have the disk reformatted in the morning; unless you happen to have a tape drive that is > the size of your hard drive, you can't do a complete disk restore without having to be on hand to feed floppies or tapes to the system. You do have to be careful about doing this if there's critical data - you ought to back up the disk first. But you ought to keep backups reasonably current anyway, Spinrite or no; then the incremental cost of running Spinrite would be an incremental backup which should be no big deal if you are keeping current :-). In my experience, the only time that sectors go bad again is when the drive is on its way out, though it's possible that in some unusual cases a few bad sectors may pass all of the pattern tests (pattern testing is probabalistic: a few "worst-case" patterns get most of the bad sectors by testing things like alternating patterns, all-0's, all-1's, etc; but adding more patterns will always find a few more sorts of things that could be wrong with the surface). That's why you should always run as many pattern tests as possible (and why Spinrite recommends that you not return previously-marked bad sectors unless you run their most extensive pattern test). Many manufacturers low-level formatting doesn't do any more pattern testing than Spinrite, so you're not gaining much (if anything) by using their test instead (in my experience). You can always run Spinrite and NOT return the bad sectors; this can actually be useful in some cases where the drive has "soft" (recoverable) errors which are usually cleared up by this procedure. > All in all, it's not worth it. It's slow and clunky. What's more, you can > really screw things up with it. This last is true of a lot of things - notably the Norton Utilities (and similar sorts of programs). I think it's a little like saying that you can really mess things up by using something like a circular saw: it can cut quickly and can be dangerous to life and limb (and to your project) if used improperly. But I don't think that that's an argument not to use it; I think it's an argument to use it _properly_, since all of these things can be quite useful tools if treated with respect. Bruce C. Wright
mvolo@uncecs.edu (Michael R. Volow) (11/20/90)
I am generally a satisfied user of Spinrite. But on one ST225, Spinrite "fixed" bad sectors in track 0, after which the HD became unbootable. I tried creating a minipartition containing that track, and making the rest of the disk the bootable partition; but it didn't work. Only when I re-low-level formatted along with the original bad track map (which did, by the way, have bad areas in track 0, but probably not the boot area) did the HD again become bootable. I don't remember anyway iin Spinrite to reclaim some bad sectors but not others. -- Michael Volow, Psychiatry, Durham VA Med Center, Durham NC 27712 919 286 0411 Ext 6933 mvolo@ecsvax.edu
quimby@itsgw.rpi.edu (Tom Stewart) (11/23/90)
Yet another program that does disk cleanups is UnFrag, part of Mace utilities. It's not the fastest thing in the world either, but it's reliable, and has a festive display to show it's progress. The rest of the Mace package is (also) very usefull, especially for data recovery. (unformat, undelete, etc.) Quimby (replies to: quimby@mts.rpi.edu, quimby@rpitsmts.bitnet)
acs17111@uop.EDU (M H Misnan) (11/25/90)
quimby@itsgw.rpi.edu (Tom Stewart) writes: >Yet another program that does disk cleanups is UnFrag, part >of Mace utilities. It's not the fastest thing in the world >either, but it's reliable, and has a festive display to >show it's progress. There is a problem with Mace utilities and Windows 3.0 permanent swap file. It will stuck when it reach Win3 permanent swap file, better to use PC Tools or Norton Speed Disk. But for me, Mace is faster. >(replies to: quimby@mts.rpi.edu, quimby@rpitsmts.bitnet) > -- Mohd H. Misnan */* Internet address: University of The Pacific, */* acs17111@uop.uop.edu Stockton, CA 95211 */* hmisnan@madvax.uop.edu Note: Because of so many complaints, I had shorten my .signature file.