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

[Justin Goldberg]

SpinRite is universally slammed in comp.ibm.pc.hardware.storage in
every thread since r6.0 came out - around 2004.

On 5/12/12, Ron Frazier (ALE) <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> "Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh, LORD, I told myself I was not going to get sucked into another
>>Steve
>>Gibson cesspool religious discussion, yet here I am...
>>
>
>>
>>My personal opinion from both the disk storage angle and the security
>>angle is that Steve Gibson is now little more than snake-oil surviving
>>on past glories.
>
> Hi Mike W.,
>
> I appreciate the technical information you've shared.  I truly don't mean
> any offence  by the following statement and hope you don't take it that way,
> but, based on the quotes above, I have to ask myself if you're being totally
> objective, as those quotes sound like a definite negative bias.
>
> In particular, snake-oil implies to me that Mr. Gibson is engaged in
> deception, fraud, or deceit; and, I really don't think that is the case.  I
> trust that he's looking out for the best interests of his listeners.  I have
> no qualms about the $ 89 I paid him once upon a time years ago for SpinRite.
>  I think it's been worth every penny.  I will admit that there are now
> cheaper alternatives that do most of what SpinRite does.
>
> Yon mention 3 things which SpinRite mainly does which I would agree to.
>
> 1) Deal with data fading.  This could also be called grown defects or bit
> rot.  I think we can certainly say that no magnetic surface is perfect, and
> that some sectors or parts of sectors will be magnetically weak.  Hopefully,
> the controller will catch those and avoid using them.  The real question is,
> will the weak ones that the controller didn't catch get weaker over time,
> and will data that was once stored become inaccessible after being ignored
> and not accessed for a long time.  You say it's not relevant to modern
> drives.  I'm not totally convinced, but I need to do some homework to
> discuss it much further.
>
> 2) Data recovery of bad sectors / blocks.  This can obviously be relevant,
> as drives do fail for any number of non mechanical reasons.  By definition,
> we're talking about sectors that cannot be read by the normal procedures
> that the OS uses.  So, right off the bat, unless you do something radical,
> you're going to lose all 1024, 2048, 4096 or whatever bytes are in the
> sector.  You say other things do this better.  I'm definitely not convinced
> of that.  However, I'm going to have to study dd-rescue a bit to discuss
> that.
>
> 3) Drive head / servo calibration.  I really wasn't aware of this one.  But,
> based on what you said, I'll concede that this is probably not relevant to
> modern drives.
>
> I want to study the technical data you shared and hopefully generate an
> intelligent reply.  I will admit to being a fan of Mr. Gibson, but I don't
> think I'm a "fanboy".  I have benefitted greatly both from his security
> podcast and from the SpinRite product.  My pc is both more secure and more
> reliable based on my listening to the information he shares.  Having said
> that, I certainly don't want to be doing 36 hours of exhaustive diagnostics
> on my hard drives if it's not helpful.  I'm not totally convinced that that
> is the case however.
>
> I'll also ask myself if I'm being objective when I reply, and keep religion
> to a minimum.  My only goal is to facilitate maximum reliability of my
> machines, and those of other people whom I'm in contact with.
>
> I'll write some more later after I've studied your information a bit more.
>
> 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
>
>
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-- 

Justin Goldberg

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