[ale] what exactly does a long smart hdd test do?

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi Justin,

I certainly wouldn't want to get into an argument over something I cannot prove. However, I'm not sure they're right. I listen to the inventor (Steve Gibson's) podcast all the time, and he says the product is still useful. He's also planning to update it to be even more helpful to newer drives, someday. I've been using computers for 30+ years, and SpinRite for maybe 15 years. I'm convinced of two things (but I could be wrong). 1) My drives are more reliable and last longer, barring mechanical problems, when I run these exhaustive diagnostics preemptively. I seem to have less problems than other family members and friends. I also run my machines all the time, which may have something to do with it. 2) I think bit rot, the slow degradation of the magnetic fields on the media is real. I know that's very controversial, but from my studies, that's what I think. Of course, even if it's real, it has nothing to do with rot. I certainly don't think these procedures hurt a drive that's in good shape, and they force the hard drive controller to examine each sector and actually read and write to it. That can allow the controller to detect early and work around any problems with the media surface.

Sincerely,

Ron


--

Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity.

(To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)

(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 email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com


Justin Goldberg <justgold79 at gmail.com> wrote:

People in comp.ibm-pc.*.storage (can't remember the exact name as I
haven't read it in awhile) are constantly knocking SpinRite as
irrelevant on modern drives. But its still good for those older
drives, say pre-2003.

On 5/11/12, Ron Frazier (ALE) <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm running routine diagnostics on my hard drives. My normal practice is to
> run SpinRite on them, which reads each sector, then refreshes the magnetic
> fields by inverting and writing and inverting and writing them again (in the
> particular mode I'm using). Thus, every bit is tested both with a 0 and 1
> and all the original data is refreshed. I don't want to get into a
> discussion as to the merits of this at the moment. I'm convinced it's a good
> idea. My problem is that I have one computer that's so old and the bios is
> so old and the hdd is so big, that SpinRite complains because the bios
> cannot access the whole drive. So, SpinRite won't run. Once Windows or Linux
> starts up, those systems can access the whole hdd. However, SpinRite runs
> strictly at the dos / bios level from a bootable CD.
>
> At the very least, I want to do a surface analysis be reading each sector.
> That, at least, will let the hdd controller review each sector and determine
> if it thinks there are any problems. In Windows, I can start a chkdisk,
> either graphically or on the command line, and specify the surface analysis
> option, and it will accomplish my goal.
>
> My problem is on the Linux side of the fence. I don't know how to do what I
> want there. I need to force the hdd to read all the sectors on the EXT4 main
> partition as well as the swap partition. Of course, I'm wanting to do all
> this nondestructively. So, I'm wondering exactly what a long smart test
> does, and whether it will accomplish my goal. It not, what would you
> recommend?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>
> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>
> (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 email messages very
> quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>


-- 

Justin Goldberg

*justgold79 at gmail.com*
(504) 208-1158
http://gplus.to/goldberg
http://twitter.com/justingoldberg
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