Howdy Gang,

I have been reading more and more about Spinrite v6 but there seems to be a serious lack of documentation for v6. There also seems to be some confusion on what level should be used for maintenance purposes that should be run ever few months. According to the opening few screens of the app Mr. Gibson says to use level 4. But many people seem to use all sorts of levels for this purpose. The only documentation seems to be for v5. On his website there was an article from Jay S:

http://www.sysopt.com/tutorials/article.php/12034_3549006_2

He states level 2 is for maintenance and level 4 is to fix problems and recover data....now this is the opposite from what Gibson says.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Did you also read this on the test done with the various levels ?

http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/utili...pinrite_v6.html


There are a total of 5 data analysis and recovery settings in SpinRite: 1) Examine the Surfaces - provides a complete report on the drive's health; 2) Recover Unreadable Data - uses Gibson Research's proprietary tolerance & recovery routines to fully rewrite the entire disk, analyzing and correcting surface errors and recovering data along the way; 3) Refresh the Surfaces - completely reads and rewrites all disk data bit by bit, twice; 4) Locate Surface Errors - reads all data twice, flipping bits from 1 to 0 and back again while fully recovering areas already marked as bad; and 5) Restore Good Sectors - reads and rewrites the entire disk bit by bit and fully restores previously unusable areas of the drive.


The UI could use a little tweak because the initial recovery level selection screen may fool you into thinking the software only offers level 2 & 4. You have to go into the settings menu to change recovery levels.

Hunter, yes I did read this but this too is also very vague. Gibson never says what to use a a routine maintenance on a hard drive.

I consider level 1 to be routine..2 if you have a problem..and 4 if you want to wear out the drive ASAP. The reliability of most drives now are good to excellent. But if you are hoping to recover data..remember this is software not hardware so if a drive des not spin or it crashes completely..stick in in a freezer for a few hour..then run it cold..and if you can make it work then..get all the data off it fast and buy a new drive.

some more that may be of interest.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14484211

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15262867

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15005718

BTW they have a news group for Spinrite and they are discussing that and other issues right now ..

Subject: Recommended level for maintenance?
http://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&...item=5026&utag=


http://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?utag=&group=...w+Earlier+Items

This guy seems to have a good theory on what maint. he pulls regularly

http://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&...item=5032&utag=

Thanks Hunter! I did not see these in dslreports.

Thanks! Yes, I have a seen all of these messages. But you would think that the orginator would tell people what is the appropriate way to use his product and not leave people guessing. It is clear people are not sure how to use this just from many posts that I have read. Don't you agree?

No..It's my System and only his program and I determine what and when based upon the primary use of the PC's I have.

and since there is enough documentation..

http://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&...item=5032&utag=
and even a manual


http://www.grc.com/files/sr5_manual.pdf

I would be comfortable making my own decisions.

hey guys.... im trying to use spinrite to recover some data from my IDE zip disk 100MB, Internal. Im using a Windows XP machine with NTFS(so that means no DOS).

How do i make my iomega zip drive recognisible as a drive for spinrite... so i can recover data..... pls reply me asap....

Note from GSF Administration:

§ 6 We do not give any personal nor private support via email, PM or IM because our team wants to prevent to get any spam. Please use our forums to tell us about your problems, hint, ideas and suggestions.

Please refer to our Global Board Rules

thanx a lot in advance...
Krishna.