[ale] Which large capacity drives are you having the best luck with?

[Ron Frazier]

Greg,

I know what you're saying.  Steve Gibson, yourself, and I are all
engineers.  So I'm sure we could all talk tech together and have a great
time.  I think that statement about delays relocates was my words
summarizing his technical document, but he said something similar.  The
problem is, he has to sell to mere mortals who are not engineers,
although they may be technically oriented.  So the technical language
has to be simplified somewhat so the average buyer can understand and
appreciate it.  Hence, market speak.  I don't think he says anything
inaccurate though.  No offense to any mere mortals on the list.

A couple of things to think about though.  Somebody in this thread,
possibly you or Pat said that SCSI and SAS drives, if I recall, will
reallocate on a read.  I'm pretty sure Spinrite will work on SCSI.  No
idea about SAS.  If they do reallocate on read, he'd have to have some
way to deal with that.

If you look at the technical document I was quoting, and look at his
flux reversal technology, circa 1995, you will find that he developed
technology to put a HIGH LOW HIGH flux reversal pattern anywhere on the
drive he wanted and make it "slide" through the entire drive in order to
really test the magnetic surface.  He did this by storing mathematical
models of all the available DATA - FLUX - ENCODER / DECODER chips
available, then tinkering with the data bits to get the flux pattern he
wanted.  I don't know if he's changed tactics since then, but, in
essence, he really was twiddling bits.

Sincerely,

Ron

On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 10:57 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:

> That is a big part of my issue with the way spinrite writes up its
> marketing material.  It basically makes it sound like spinrite is
> inside the drive twiddling bits.  By using long reads / writes, it can
> indeed do a lot, but it can't do everything!
> 
> Statements like "spinrite delays relocates while data recovery is
> going" on makes it sound like spinrite has too much control.
> 
> As an engineer, I'd rather read "spinrite does not do any normal
> sector writes while data recovery or surface analysis is ongoing
> because a normal sector write could trigger a relocate."
> 
> Greg

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com