<html><head></head><body>Hi Justin,<br>
<br>
Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at it as well as rummage through Steve Gibson's website a bit. We had a discussion about this on the ALE list about a year ago. I think most of the docs there are for SpinRite 5. I'm much more interested in what it can do for modern drives, and that information is hard to find. I will say that are probably very few people on these mailing lists, including me, which know more about how hard drives work than Mr. Gibson. And, since he's the inventor of the SpinRite product, no one knows more about how that works than him.<br>
<br>
I see no need for a flame war at all. Hard drives are going to be around for a long time. I sometimes tell people I could power my house with solar power for the cost of the house. (Analogy follows.) Well, at $ 1 - $ 2 / GB, I could SSD my entire computer for the cost of the computer. Not happening. So, I think any material discussion we can have about how to make hard drives last longer and be more reliable is beneficial.<br>
<br>
I say, if you want to hang around in the discussion, if there is more discussion, then please do.<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<br>
Ron<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.<br>
Please excuse my potential brevity.<br>
<br>
(To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former<br>
messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong<br>
address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)<br>
<br>
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to<br>
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy<br>
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)<br>
<br>
Ron Frazier<br>
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.<br>
linuxdude AT <a href="http://techstarship.com">techstarship.com</a><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">Justin Goldberg <justgold79@gmail.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; font-family: sans-serif">But exactly how does it do its disabling of the drives internal ec and do its defect analysis? What kind of voodoo does it do on the drive? This has never been documented. It makes sense to use it on older drives (I keep 5.0 in my utility toolchest for the odd mfm/rll drive I encounter) but with the advanced error correction in newer drives it doesn't make sense. <br /><br />I dug up this discussion from the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage group:<br /><br /><a href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/browse_thread/thread/958d7e095d15c3fc/ce0dec6a189c5eae?lnk=gst&q=Spinrite#ce0dec6a189c5eae">http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/browse_thread/thread/958d7e095d15c3fc/ce0dec6a189c5eae?lnk=gst&q=Spinrite#ce0dec6a189c5eae</a><br /><br />Here's one quote from Arno:<br /><br />Their product used to have some merit in the old MFM times. Today, they are just cashing in on the remainder of that reputation. <br /><br /><br />I don't want to engage in a flame-war, and the vagaries of low level magnetic storage isn't really my thing, so I'll drop out of the discussion. The discussion I linked to above goes quite in-depth. <br /><br /><br />On Fri, 11 May 2012 21:09:45 -0400, ale-bounces@ale.org wrote:<br />> <br /><hr /><br />Ale mailing list<br />Ale@ale.org<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale</a><br />See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br /><a href="http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo">http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo</a><br /></pre></blockquote></div></body></html>