Steve Gibson, SpinRite's "Dad" here... Wow, Jay. Thank you for helping spread the word. I'm hoping to at least get the news of the no-charge upgrade to v6.1 out to SpinRite 6's 20 years of past purchasers (v6.0 was released in 2004). So what you've taken the time to do really helps. And I thought your comments and review were perfectly balanced. Thanks again!
One of the features that SpinRite has that seems very useful to me is the ability to re-write the data on an SSD when the constant use of that SSD has introduced many many errors that now slow done the process as the system spends so much time error correcting. As it re-writes the data all the errors are eliminated and the speed of the drive is restored.
-If your backups are laying around in a cabinet, with spinrite you can refresh de sectors of the hard disk(yes also ssd needs refreshing).(or you can copy to another hard disk). -You can use spirite also if you damage(the sectors) the beginning of a hard disk, because a hard disk will not boot or be usable if the starting sectors a damaged, I used this 2 times and it worked with this problem.
I got this long time ago back in the XP era. Didn't help me at all back then still lost data. What's funny after I reformatted the drive it worked fine for another 5 years after that. Though that got me into doing DVD backups regularly now extra drive backups which is always the best way.
Been using SpinRite since heck was a pup. This video reinvigorates me to go do some maintenance on a couple of my old work horses....and figure out how to get the newest version since I bought a version forever ago.
The creator of SpinRite has learned and shared a great deal about SSD's (and continues to), and the surprising ways SpinRite helps solid state as much as spinners.
@@billwarren5122 I saw some summaries of performance improvements but I didn't see any explanation of what exactly SpinRite 6.1 is doing on SSDs. Specifically, I'd like to know what it means for storage to be in the "front of drive", "midpoint of drive", and "end of drive" on an SSD, especially when the actual location of storage is managed by storage mapping where the SSD's firmware decides where storage should be located. I'm going to remain skeptical until one of the usual impartial testing houses does a comprehensive test.
Spinrite is not for data recovery but for sector “repair” to allow for software level recovery. I have used this to “fix” bad sectors to perform a successful clone followed by error correction via scan tools but it’s not a perfect method and not a reliable method. I have had success having spin rite fix drives with hundreds of bad sectors to be used as spare drives but sometimes these take days to perform and not guaranteed - I had a hard drive take weeks to “fix” a sector but would not get passed and wasn’t worth running but I had spin rite take few days successfully reviving a drive that failed SMART but then passes SMART tests. So yeah, it’s a great tool to have but i would not use it solely for data recovery.
Not needed anymore. Perhaps data recovery? But I have it and only used it once, maybe twice, with old IDE disks with weak sectors. Never needed it since SATA drives or SSDs, as once those fail, NO software can fix or get 100% of the data. Can it fix bad sectors or smart errors!?
Great video I’ve known about spin rite (and Steve Gibson via Leo Laporte and the gang lol) however I disagree with the value I was at Walmart yesterday and you can pick up a new hard drive for 90 bucks so he should drop the price to half or free also he should make 7.0 going forward cross platform so you can make a bootable device from Linux Mac or windows! I blasted windows away with no return the laptop is at this moment running Debian 12 with mate
Is Spin-Rite really a data recovery tool, by definition? Kind of a tool in it's own category. It doesn't understand OS file structure. Trstdisk is more of a data recovery tool. It does understand partition and file structures. I can't remember the name of the pricey tool real data recovery people use. Edit: PC3000 was what u was trying to think of.
Common for data recovery tools is not to write to 'patient', SpinRite breaks that rule. Common is to try reduce stress on patient, SpinRite breaks this rule. Data recovery is very much about reducing the risk of the patient dying in the operating table. Data recovery is about making every read count; if we can read a sector, we better make certain to save it to for example a disk image on another drive. That way, if the drive dies after rescuing 80% of it, we at least have those 80% worth of data. If same happens during a scan using SpinRite we have nothing, 0% instead.
Spinrite deals with 1's and 0's from the magnetic medium. File structure is derivative ... fstab, or even UEFI partitions, are useless when it can't read the 1's and 0's. SpinRite reads, and re-reads, until it gets the best version of the data it can, and then it re-writes it ... which will be written to more reliable sectors of the HD. This is based on the author's explanations in SecurityNow podcasts, which he transcribes for reading / searching ...gosh, AI should have a field day on his transcripts ... that's the right kinda LLM training. PS -- all my commenting is for future readers.
v7 will support UEFI. The author got distracted solving the password breach problem (SQRL). Nobody listened. Finally got back to 6.1 and is re-focused on v7.
YOu dont buy spinrite to insure against disk failure, you back up 3 2 1 style your important data, spinrite for data maintenance and or recovery for family or friends that dont backup
(Steve Gibson, SpinRite's "Dad" here): SpinRite has saved data for hundreds of thousands of users at far less cost than data recovery services. I've never claimed that SpinRite can do everything that a service charging thousands of dollars can... But such extensive recovery is more often than not unnecessary. And SpinRite today is about much more than recovery. It's dramatically speeding up SSD storage by restoring it to original factory performance. :)
Yes. It actually is. Data recovery businesses will do FAR more, but many start off with SpinRite since it typically does all the heavy lifting and many times nothing more is needed. SpinRite will definitely not replace a professional data recovery organization, especially if the drive is "more dead" - as in won't spin up at all, needs replacement PCB, etc. But for about 99% of use cases SpinRite will get the job done FAR faster and FAR less expensively. :)
@@SGgrc Good to know! I don’t know much about this field, but I recently had an external hard drive with all my video projects go bad on me and they were quoting over $600 for data I had already mostly backed up onto my newer external SSD. I appreciate your video! Very informative.
Most definitely not. SpinRite goes against any unwritten rule in data recovery: Thou shalt not stress the patient (quite the opposite of hammering a sector up to 2000 times) and thou shalt take first opportunity to clone / image the patient. Try ask this question in hddguru forums and get laughed at.
@@SGgrc Utter nonsense and you know it. I accused you of selling snake oil and this proves it. Look at channel hddrecoveryservices for example if you want to see tools a typical lab uses, there's over 100 videos of actual recoveries. Aside from hardware to repair drives, soldering tools etc. we use pro grade hardware like PC3000, DeepSpar, MRT, DFL for spinning drives and SSDs, PC3000 flash, Rusolut VNR, Flash Extractor for memory cards, USB flash drives etc., for purely logical recovery we use tools like R-Studio, UFS Explorer, DMDE .. But most certainly NOT SpinRite.
Have you ever listened to security now? It's written in assembly from Steve Gibson... Even if you could read the code, it's assembly... You probably wouldn't be able to understand it
@@mllarsonactually you can... I replaced the bios on my laptop about 15 years ago because the virtualization was disabled in the stock bios. I compared the differences. Fortunately, the changes were minor enough that I could tell what was done.
@@csvscs having seen some of Steve's code, and if it's as properly commented as that, it's probably readable and understandable. also you make assumption @greob can not read assembly code.
Hahahha the thumbnail is awesome!
I saw my green screen in the corner and couldn't resist.
Steve Gibson, SpinRite's "Dad" here... Wow, Jay. Thank you for helping spread the word. I'm hoping to at least get the news of the no-charge upgrade to v6.1 out to SpinRite 6's 20 years of past purchasers (v6.0 was released in 2004). So what you've taken the time to do really helps. And I thought your comments and review were perfectly balanced. Thanks again!
Is spinrite only for spinning disks or SSDs as well? I remember spinrite from back in the DOS days.
As long as the bios can see the drive you're good. SSD should use level 2. According to GRC and security now
@@donaldmickunas8552Ive had good luck with SpinRite and SSDs especially for OS speedup on machines that have been running for a long time.
@@BrandonWAndrews Thanks! Much appreciated.
Wow! I lost track of Spinrite years ago. Amazing tool, saved me more than a few times!
One of the features that SpinRite has that seems very useful to me is the ability to re-write the data on an SSD when the constant use of that SSD has introduced many many errors that now slow done the process as the system spends so much time error correcting. As it re-writes the data all the errors are eliminated and the speed of the drive is restored.
Thank you for the nice memories. Started using SpinRite on 1988, gosh I miss the 5.25" floppy disks
-If your backups are laying around in a cabinet, with spinrite you can refresh de sectors of the hard disk(yes also ssd needs refreshing).(or you can copy to another hard disk).
-You can use spirite also if you damage(the sectors) the beginning of a hard disk, because a hard disk will not boot or be usable if the starting sectors a damaged, I used this 2 times and it worked with this problem.
Oh man, I would love to hear about this review on the next episode of Security Now! 😃
Like what @@spcenc1102
I got this long time ago back in the XP era. Didn't help me at all back then still lost data. What's funny after I reformatted the drive it worked fine for another 5 years after that. Though that got me into doing DVD backups regularly now extra drive backups which is always the best way.
Thanks. I remember using SpinRite years ago.
Thanks Jay. I've listened to Steve for years and still wasn't exactly sure what SpinRite did and at this point I was too afraid to ask.
Agreed! You should do a fall video where you show the performance boost on running spin right on ssds
I used this in the old DOS days. It was a great tool. I will have to check out the new version.
Been using SpinRite since heck was a pup. This video reinvigorates me to go do some maintenance on a couple of my old work horses....and figure out how to get the newest version since I bought a version forever ago.
omg IT LIVES !!!
Nice. I just downloaded 6.1 yesterday.
I'll be really curious to learn how SpinRite works on SSDs. Most (all?) of what it claims to do on hard drives can't be done on SSDs.
The creator of SpinRite has learned and shared a great deal about SSD's (and continues to), and the surprising ways SpinRite helps solid state as much as spinners.
@@billwarren5122 I saw some summaries of performance improvements but I didn't see any explanation of what exactly SpinRite 6.1 is doing on SSDs.
Specifically, I'd like to know what it means for storage to be in the "front of drive", "midpoint of drive", and "end of drive" on an SSD, especially when the actual location of storage is managed by storage mapping where the SSD's firmware decides where storage should be located.
I'm going to remain skeptical until one of the usual impartial testing houses does a comprehensive test.
SpinRite should not be an insurance policy. A good backup should be!! Shouldn't be trying to recover bad drives.
I own and have used several times. Has allowed me to recover data from drives and has revitalized several drives as well.
Can you make a video to talk more detail about apt?
Like the how to repo to ubuntu (key and source.list).
a rich linux guy once said.. it is better to have and not need, than to need and not have..
I had an earlier version and it only worked on IDE (PATA) drives. I might wait for a later version than 6.1 that addresses secure boot.
Fyi. Currently Spinrite cannot be run from a Ventoy USB stick. Needs its own dedicated stick.
Spinrite is not for data recovery but for sector “repair” to allow for software level recovery. I have used this to “fix” bad sectors to perform a successful clone followed by error correction via scan tools but it’s not a perfect method and not a reliable method. I have had success having spin rite fix drives with hundreds of bad sectors to be used as spare drives but sometimes these take days to perform and not guaranteed - I had a hard drive take weeks to “fix” a sector but would not get passed and wasn’t worth running but I had spin rite take few days successfully reviving a drive that failed SMART but then passes SMART tests. So yeah, it’s a great tool to have but i would not use it solely for data recovery.
Not needed anymore.
Perhaps data recovery?
But I have it and only used it once, maybe twice, with old IDE disks with weak sectors.
Never needed it since SATA drives or SSDs, as once those fail, NO software can fix or get 100% of the data.
Can it fix bad sectors or smart errors!?
What CP/M utilities do you recommend?
I honestly don’t have a clue about those. Other than TubeBuddy I don’t use much of anything.
Wow, I'm surprised it is still around. I used it religeously over 20 years ago.
What about in a raid 5 with 2 lost drives
Great video I’ve known about spin rite (and Steve Gibson via Leo Laporte and the gang lol) however I disagree with the value I was at Walmart yesterday and you can pick up a new hard drive for 90 bucks so he should drop the price to half or free also he should make 7.0 going forward cross platform so you can make a bootable device from Linux Mac or windows! I blasted windows away with no return the laptop is at this moment running Debian 12 with mate
Now, if only I had a motherboard it would run on.
I have a 2004 copy from the MediCat bundle.
Is Spin-Rite really a data recovery tool, by definition? Kind of a tool in it's own category. It doesn't understand OS file structure. Trstdisk is more of a data recovery tool. It does understand partition and file structures. I can't remember the name of the pricey tool real data recovery people use.
Edit: PC3000 was what u was trying to think of.
For spinning disks it is a surface check, refresh and recovery tool. Below the level of file systems.
Common for data recovery tools is not to write to 'patient', SpinRite breaks that rule. Common is to try reduce stress on patient, SpinRite breaks this rule. Data recovery is very much about reducing the risk of the patient dying in the operating table. Data recovery is about making every read count; if we can read a sector, we better make certain to save it to for example a disk image on another drive. That way, if the drive dies after rescuing 80% of it, we at least have those 80% worth of data. If same happens during a scan using SpinRite we have nothing, 0% instead.
Spinrite deals with 1's and 0's from the magnetic medium. File structure is derivative ... fstab, or even UEFI partitions, are useless when it can't read the 1's and 0's. SpinRite reads, and re-reads, until it gets the best version of the data it can, and then it re-writes it ... which will be written to more reliable sectors of the HD. This is based on the author's explanations in SecurityNow podcasts, which he transcribes for reading / searching ...gosh, AI should have a field day on his transcripts ... that's the right kinda LLM training. PS -- all my commenting is for future readers.
I could not use SpinRite 6.0 in 2014 because it did not support 4TB drives.
I cannot use Spinrite 6.1 because it does not support UEFI only systems.
v7 will support UEFI. The author got distracted solving the password breach problem (SQRL). Nobody listened. Finally got back to 6.1 and is re-focused on v7.
This an old program, glad to see its coming back
I always thought of this app as being snake oily.
Common misconception.
Correct
It is.
@@chrispeden979 Wrong, it has worked for me in the past. I don't know why you are shitting on it? Have you ever used it?
Because it is.
YOu dont buy spinrite to insure against disk failure, you back up 3 2 1 style your important data, spinrite for data maintenance and or recovery for family or friends that dont backup
There's 5 levels available in spinrite...
Try DDRescue first.
Anyone who does any sort of pro level revovery knows this is snake oil. I love steve but this software is not to be used.
(Steve Gibson, SpinRite's "Dad" here): SpinRite has saved data for hundreds of thousands of users at far less cost than data recovery services. I've never claimed that SpinRite can do everything that a service charging thousands of dollars can... But such extensive recovery is more often than not unnecessary. And SpinRite today is about much more than recovery. It's dramatically speeding up SSD storage by restoring it to original factory performance. :)
Snake oil? I guess I got lucky for years. Please teach us more.
@@jmc4381 I've used it to recover dozens of machines.
@@fredlaxton Yep... And now that will take far less time! :)
How so? Do you have empirical proof? It works for me.
Spinrite, the best for what it is doing
Oiling snakes.
Is this what software recovery businesses use when they charge hundreds of dollars to recover corrupted hard drive data?
no
Yes. It actually is. Data recovery businesses will do FAR more, but many start off with SpinRite since it typically does all the heavy lifting and many times nothing more is needed. SpinRite will definitely not replace a professional data recovery organization, especially if the drive is "more dead" - as in won't spin up at all, needs replacement PCB, etc. But for about 99% of use cases SpinRite will get the job done FAR faster and FAR less expensively. :)
@@SGgrc Good to know! I don’t know much about this field, but I recently had an external hard drive with all my video projects go bad on me and they were quoting over $600 for data I had already mostly backed up onto my newer external SSD. I appreciate your video! Very informative.
Most definitely not. SpinRite goes against any unwritten rule in data recovery: Thou shalt not stress the patient (quite the opposite of hammering a sector up to 2000 times) and thou shalt take first opportunity to clone / image the patient. Try ask this question in hddguru forums and get laughed at.
@@SGgrc Utter nonsense and you know it. I accused you of selling snake oil and this proves it. Look at channel hddrecoveryservices for example if you want to see tools a typical lab uses, there's over 100 videos of actual recoveries. Aside from hardware to repair drives, soldering tools etc. we use pro grade hardware like PC3000, DeepSpar, MRT, DFL for spinning drives and SSDs, PC3000 flash, Rusolut VNR, Flash Extractor for memory cards, USB flash drives etc., for purely logical recovery we use tools like R-Studio, UFS Explorer, DMDE .. But most certainly NOT SpinRite.
Embedded ads AND ads........ FFS!
Very nice , very usefull , thanks 😊
I can't audit the code, so I won't use it.
Can you audit your BIOS?
Have you ever listened to security now? It's written in assembly from Steve Gibson... Even if you could read the code, it's assembly... You probably wouldn't be able to understand it
@@csvscs says who?
@@mllarsonactually you can... I replaced the bios on my laptop about 15 years ago because the virtualization was disabled in the stock bios. I compared the differences. Fortunately, the changes were minor enough that I could tell what was done.
@@csvscs having seen some of Steve's code, and if it's as properly commented as that, it's probably readable and understandable. also you make assumption @greob can not read assembly code.
badblocks -wsv -t "random" -b 4096 /dev/sdd 😉
⚠ this deletes data on drive