Talk:SpinRite

message: See "Modification to SpinRite 6.0 which Provides a Work-Around for the 'B04E' Division Overflow Error" https://dev.grc.com/Steve/spinrite-v6.1/-/issues/423 for exploration of SpinRite programming itself not anticipating large drives, and as a result, falls into some unanticipated impossible math, and error's out, suggesting that all Division Overflow Errors are SpinRite 6 programming based.  We need to change the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite#Large_drives section, it's speculation and workarounds.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8806:2407:C100:7C50:EE84:5E17:343E (talk) 11:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, he's been blaming the BIOS for this error for decades, it's always someone else's fault. In the end it turns out it's a bug in SpinRite. 2A02:A462:1D9A:1:263B:B956:3C6B:4B0F (talk) 07:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Division Overflow Error section is speculation

message: To me, the article doesn't seem to be written like an advertisement. The ones of Windows and Something Awful are far worse and uncritical. Maybe an older version was badly written, but not the one I read now. 46.253.186.62 (talk) 12:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I will consider removing the tag. - Bevo (talk) 19:37, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Advertisement?

message: Version 6 seems rather different from Version 5.  Version 6 seems faster, more practical for modern larger hard drives.  Version 5 was perhaps more thorough.  Version 6 is supposed to work with "all" partition types, whereas Version 5 required working, common partition formatting, such as FAT.  Version 6 seems to be more oriented to the raw hard drive, as opposed to the formatted partitions.  Version 6 documentation may still not be completed.
It usually takes hours to scan a hard drive with SpinRite.  In some cases it can take days.
A hard disk with bad blocks can be hard to scan with SpinRite 5, because of difficulty formatting to prepare for SpinRite.  A ghost image of an empty formatted partition can be used to "fake format" the partition, so that SpinRite can scan it.
SpinRite 5 always insists on scanning each partition from the beginning, and can get very bogged down on bad areas.  Is there any good quick tool for getting a picture of where all the bad areas are?
Both versions may interact in mysterious ways with the undocumented proprietary hidden hard drive features that manage bad block mapping.  SpinRite may sometimes be able to recover blocks that had been mapped out?  Some say this is a dangerous feature.
If you wish to re-use hard drives with significant bad areas, the best thing is to re-partition and stay completely away from those areas.  However, this must be done manually with awkward (non-Microsoft) partitioning utility tools.  There seem to be no tools that make it easy to scan for bad areas and then re-partition to avoid them. 69.87.193.26 13:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Versions 5 vs. 6

message: The page states:
:When it encounters a block which is hard to read, it repeatedly attempts to re-read it, and tries to determine the value of each byte. The data is then saved onto the same disk (after re-allocating the physical block) which is a potentially risky operation if the disk write head is not operating properly. 
I used the program several times, and studied enough the documentation, it is not the way the program works, the data are not simply re-allocated, instead, a block is read, then it is written with an opposite sequence of data (if it was 00110101, it becomes 11001010), then it is rewritten again with the original sequence; it is done even several times (hopefully I am not violating any WP or copyright policy in disclosing such information).Dr. Who 00:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You sound confused, Who.  You seem to be describing how the program treats "ordinary" sectors.  The quote you used is describing what happens when a sector is bad.  Two very different things. With ordinary sectors, it is just trying to make sure the sector is reliable.  Once it decides a sector has problems, it needs to make every effort to get the data, then make an effort to put the data safely somewhere else.-71.174.175.104 (talk) 23:26, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

text: This can only be right if the program issues a READ LONG command was retired from the ATA standard in 2003. A 'normal' is binary: It either delivers the data or not. A 'non-perfect read' as you say, that delivers partial data does not exist. Also IF data is returned, it is verified against ECC so can assumed to be correct. IOW recovery can stop right there, no need for 2000 reads and analysis of data delivered by repeated retries. DIYDDR (talk) 23:37, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The way it works 

message: For a program that's worked wonders for many, for over a decade, it still surprises me that gibson has to resort to such bs pseudoscience to get it to sell. I'd of thought reputation alone would be enough... but he doesn't think so. Funny. -- BesigedB (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, "odd" is a good term...  The program seems semi-abandon-ware, just on auto-pilot.  Much of the website material is way out of date, obviously untouched for years.  The program itself has not been updated for over five years -- a serious issue considering how fast the technology of hard drives and interfaces has been changing.  Steve has always taken the position that his program is for "ordinary" users, and avoided providing real documentation for tech-oriented customers.  For a unique, odd-tech program/product like this, a recipe for confusion among all concerned. -71.174.175.104 (talk) 23:37, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "considering how fast the technology of hard drives and interfaces has been changing" The thing is, Steve claims (in his podcasts) that even though the disk densities are increasing drastically, the same underlying technology is used. That's why the program doesn't need an update: all drivers work the same as many years back, but they're just larger and faster. (With the exception of solid-state drivers of course.) --DanielPharos (talk) 18:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: While not appropriate for the article to mention without seeming to be a marketing tactic, many programs on the market issue upgrades each year or so (needed or not) as a way of getting more money from the consumer.  The spinrite product seems to not do this, so customers used to the "milk the customer every year with an 'upgrade'" may feel uncomfortable with products that do not follow this capitalist approach towards making a profit.  I admit it does feel "comforting" to get an upgrade, even if the changes were minor because peace of mind may be worth more to many customers than the loss of money to pay for the upgrade.  It would also allow for addressing of bugs such as fatal program aborts that Spinrite was not able to recover from when processing some of the newest two terabyte "green" drives from Hitachi.AnimeJanai (talk) 13:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  like everything out of grc; it's odd 

message: Im running SpinRite right now on a Samsung disk with atleast 9 bad blocks. The DynaStat Data Recovery has some nice graphics, but I am very skeptical to basically all the claims made by it (the graphics and its website). I heard from one of my friends that it was "awesome" basically, and could really repair disks. I can tell you it did not work on my disk though. 
Anyway, I am interested in how it gets the data from the disk: does ATA return data even if the checksums don't match up or does his program actually do anything special? I also wonder why the regular re-allocation algorithms dont work as good as SpinRite, if thats true. Ive tried running a bunch of the recovery tools from Ultimate Boot CD, but none were able to "repair" or reallocate the sectors. It seems SpinRite isnt either, though, so.. 62.84.192.238
I believe that ATA/IDE disks return data even if it fails ECC checks, at least when driven in the way SpinRite does.
Richard Donkin 09:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: SpinRprite has worked for me.  I had problems with a laptop 2.5 inch hdd.  There were clicking noises coming from the disk. At first the drive would suddenly slow way down during read/write operations, and later on Windows would hang at boot.  I ran spinrite, which claimed that the drive was dying, and it found 3 bad sectors, 2 of which it could not recover.  After this windows went past the booting process, but claimed that some system files were missing.  copied all the Data and got a new HDD.  SpinRite, even though it has some false advertising, works in some cases...--169.232.119.69 (talk) 23:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts 

message: The discussion of Linux alternatives is very, very useful, though it should really be spun off into another page with a pointer from here.  I recently had the misfortune of needing to use all these tools, including SpinRite and the Linux dd_rhelp and GNU ddrescue tools, and made an update to SpinRite accordingly, based on some information I found elsewhere. I think that the page should talk about the benefits of GNU ddrescue, which is much faster than dd_rhelp - if this had been mentioned I wouldn't have wasted time getting dd_rhelp and dd_rescue working.
Richard Donkin 09:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linux tools 

message: One of the features of Spinrite 6, which seems to have been missed, is that IDE sector sparing (and other features) are disabled during data recovery process. This prevents the drive from automatically replacing the bad sector with a good one from the spare sectors shipped on all drives when data read errors occur.
In the Dynastat process, which tries repeatedly to re-read the bad sector by approaching the sector from different positions and applying statistical analysis on the read data, sector sparing is disabled preventing the drive from giving up to early.
I don't believe that other similar tools do this, and this seems to be one of the reasons that Spinrite is successful at recovering data on drives reporting errors.
Spinrite is not always successful but when it works it works well.
:The problem is spinrite doesn't say how it does this. I think that only certain drives provide an interface for this. But spinrite just claims it can do this whenever it likes to whatever drives.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.144.251.120 (talk) 22:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  IDE Feature Disable during Dynastat Recovery 

message: I won't put this in the main article as it's "Original Research". I ran Spinrite 6 on a problem 2.5" SATA Windows Vista drive from a Dell computer; it had various Dell partitions on it, and an NTFS partition with the operating system and user files. The disc was connected via a SATA-to-USB connector. Spinrite did not detect the disc as present at all. Another, good, disc was found correctly by Spinrite and all partitions identified with the same SATA-to-USB adaptor, so this is not a problem with the interface. I would normally interpret this as meaning the disc is totally dead.
However, CHKDSK showed the relevant partition as being present but with a corrupt Master File Table, which it could not correct. TestDisk told me that the backup Partition Table was corrupt, so I updated it from the original; it then told me that the both the main and the backup MFT were corrupt, and it could do no more. I then ran Zero Assumption Recovery and was able to recover a great many files. As usual in these cases the majority of the files were intact, but a large minority were corrupt. CHKDSK and TestDisk also correctly identified the other partitions, although they were of no interest to me. 
I was also able to view the contents of an intact partition with ordinary Windows methods (like Explorer); the bad partition showed (as healthy) in the Disk Management Administrative Tool, but gave an error on trying to access it in Explorer.
The point is not that Spinrite failed to identify or cope with the corrupt system information; that's not what Spinrite is for. My intention in running Spinrite first was to attempt to read and repair the sectors containing the damaged system tables, and any other damaged sectors. But it completely failed to recognise a disc which several other programs recognised. When Spinrite totally failed to recognise a disc, in the past I took it to be beyond recovery; that is clearly not always the case. Whether the drive had hardware trouble or was simply corrupt I don't know, as I didn't try to reformat it. Pol098 (talk) 14:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Your experience is an interesting data point.  But it would be much more useful if you had also tried connecting the problem drive directly to a computer.  The fact that the SATA-to-USB adaptor seemed to work OK with a good drive does not prove that it was not an issue with the problem drive.  A tool like Spinrite needs the most direct low-level access to the drive possible, for the best chance of good results. -71.174.175.104 (talk) 22:57, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: (Inserted out of sequence, in Jan 2011:) As the original poster of this issue, and of the following paragraph, I'd just comment that I used exactly the same hardware setup for the unsuccessful Spinrite run and for the successful recovery with other tools. Pol098 (talk) 18:01, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately for our purposes here I was trying to solve a problem rather than test Spinrite. I don't remember the details; maybe I didn't have a bootable CD drive to run Spinrite from on the original computer? I have used Spinrite successfully on a corrupted USB-connected drive. The practical conclusion I reached is that, at least in some circumstances, a drive that Spinrite does not even recognise is not necessarily a dead loss - further testing is needed. (added later:) My intention in posting this was not a general discussion of Spinrite, but that a particular assumption I had in practice made, and perhaps many people would make: "if Spinrite can't see the drive it's unrecoverable" was wrong and a sensible working assumtion is (in MS Windows) is "if Spinrite can't see the drive try Windows Explorer, MHDD, and other tools". This would be worth mentioning in the article, but unless somebody has published it somewhere it's clearly OR. Pol098 (talk) 19:12, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Spinrite problem 

message: I'd like to open the NPOV discussion back up at this time. I see a lot of "the maker says" type comments and lots of "quoted words" in the main description, and it makes the page look like it's cringing while explaining this. I say that this is very negatively POV based. I know, from reading the other NPOV discussion, that last time it seemed to praise the software too much, but now I say that it critisizes the software too much. 
What we need is some major overhauling of this page so that it is a encyclopedic entry with a section on what the claims of the software are, and another section on the criticisms. And to balance the thing, there needs to be more honest criticism of it than a single paragraph (honest meaning not putting weasel words in the description). ------Tustin2121 talk 04:08, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redisputed 

message: I've also read various forum posts that make statements regarding the usefulness & legitimacy of this software.  But then, it was featured on TechTalk.  I'm sure it's a matter of "shades of grey"; that perhaps it's usefulness has been overstated by those that aren't really qualified to have an opinion, and the "scam" charges are a result of that.  Also, I think I remember there being some kind of "falling out" between the original two developers, so with a bit of interpersonal atagonism thrown in the mix, things can spiral viral and out of control.  (Cute, eh ? Lol..)
So I think what would be really nice if is the author of the software could give some kind of technical substance to what SpinRite does.  Like he did in the TechTalk interview (available for download at the SpinRite web-site, and a link might be included in the wiki).  Also on that, sending two video files compressed into a single .rar file is TRUE geek, and cumbersome.  It would be better for the flow of information if the two files were straightforward .avi or .mp? files.  At $90.00 a copy, the increase in bandwidth isn't going to hurt anyone.
A section in the wiki, supported with a few graphics showing what's happening and how (I imagine a platter with sectors and bits and an armiture doing things) from someone with intimate technical understanding of what's going on would go a long way toward dispelling any stink of "scam", because I believe it's absence is what's providing fertile ground for it to grow.  Meaning that in part, it's the author himself (who is as capable of contributing to the wiki of his own product as anyone AND has a financial interest in doing so) that shares some of the responsibility for the "clouded" nature of how this software is percieved.
I haven't tried it yet.  My second point (the suggestion) is that it would be useful I think to mention another similar software named "HDD Regenerator" by Dmitriy Primochenko (link here: http://www.dposoft.net/#b_hddhid), which I HAVE used, to sometimes very astounding success.  It really DOES rejuvenate "dead" hard drives, and I rely on it to do my little computer repair business.  It's just taking too long for one particular drive, which has prompted me looking into an alternative, such as SpinRite.
So, it would be useful to mention HDD Regenerator and compare and contrast the two software's so that whatever similarities and/or differences are detailed.  Maybe they are equivalent, or have different capabilities.  Maybe if one fails, the other may be able to fix a HD.  It would be nice to be able to read about both, crossed-linked in two wiki articles.  The more information thrown in, the more legitimate and/or limited both softwares will seem.
Jonny Quick (talk) 08:58, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dispute and a Suggestion 

message: The trouble with this sort of software is that it's impossible to test without both great expertise and a huge sample to generate usable statistics; access to source code or other very detailed information would also help. However expert you are, you can only run it and see what happens. If the result is usually recovered data you become a supporter, even if another approach would actually have been as good or better. You can't do comparative tests on a drive because you can't put it back the way it was between one approach and another. I've often used Spinrite, often with good results, but some of the claims made seem dubious. I don't understand about refreshing surfaces; I understand (maybe incorrectly or out-of-dately) that positioning on discs is controlled by recorded stripes which cannot be erased or rewritten; if the data fades, wouldn't  the adjacent positioning information also be comprised?
I've certainly had a a case where Spinrite totally failed even to recognise a disc; in such a case I'd tend to just chuck it out. But I happened to try <sarcastic> more sophisticated </sarcastic> software, namely Windows Explorer, which led me to taking further steps and recovering most of the data; see section "#A Spinrite problem", which I started, above.
Pol098 (talk) 18:02, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does it work? 

message: I own a copy and have used it twice now.  
The first time was at level 4 on an elderly Maxtor 120GB PATA drive that was finally starting to be unreadable - SpinRite recovered all but one of the sectors that were going south.  I sucked all the data in one partition off of it, but forgot the second, smaller partition.  I'm going to mount the drive soon and slurp up the data from the second partition.  Then I'll decide whether it's worth risking keeping the drive in service.
The second time was on several used Seagate 73GB SCSI drives I'd bought.  I was surprised when Spinrite went "eeeuuuuw" and told me that 2 of the drives didn't know what size they were and therefore Spinrite would have no truck with them.  I verified and low-level formatted them, and then Spinrite was happy to look at them, tho of course at that point everything was zeroed out and already remapped. 
Right now I've a 640GB WD Blue that doesn't think it's formatted.  It's possible that I moved everything off it and just don't remember, but I expect I'll let Spinrite have a look at it when I have a few hours to spare. 71.162.80.74 (talk) 00:11, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  It seems to work 

message: Modern computers which lack the BIOS option to 'enable legacy USB support' may experience unpredictable results at the conclusion of SpinRite (4 out of 4 in tests using popular Dell models.) While the keyboard works fine during the configuration steps, as soon as the scan begins the keyboard is completely unpredictable. It may seem to ignore some keypresses; beep numerous times for a single keypress; and will appear to store unacknowledged keypresses into a buffer that is then emptied out at apparently random times.
The result is that after a multi-hour or over-night run, the results may be unable to be displayed, leaving the user unaware of indicated success of failure.
A form letter which has been emailed since at least 2008 explains that the customer is encouraged to just 'run MS-DOS instead'. SpinRite is packaged with FreeDOS, so repackaging the software to be functional on modern hardware is left as an exercise for the customer.
Itismike (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: A possible workaround would be to edit the bootable image of FreeDOS + Spinrite to include a USB driver and invoke it in CONFIG.SYS. I haven't had this issue, but if others have, maybe solutions are findable on the Web? Pol098 (talk) 18:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bug with modern USB keyboard controllers 

message: Well, as a person that understands all of the technical ditty that Gibson puts out with the Spinrite docs and information, I think it's time that Spinrite is "outed" as the modern drive-killer that it is.
Personally, I went to a decent amount of effort to integrate Spinrite into my Boot CD (FalconFour's Ultimate Boot CD) so it can be used more easily in the field. So I've given it many runs-around and "chances to succeed" in the modern world, from 2009 to today. In that time, I've found... it doesn't work for a damn.
Basically, it uses a hard drive's "self-repairing" functionality to fix sectors. Before it gives the drive a chance to repair itself, though, it tries to recover as much data as possible from each individual (512-byte) sector - hence where "Bits 0...4095" come from in the recovery graphic. It reads the damaged sector hundreds or thousands of times, trying to find the "most popular" occurrence of each bit (which, itself, is flawed logic: the drives already do as much recovery as possible before returning an error - which is WHY it takes so long to run!). Then, it'll "write" that recovered data back over the damaged sector, and the drive will automatically remap the known-bad (after a thousand bad reads? duh!) sector to a new area of the drive. Then, Spinrite will move on.
Here's where it gets bad: that's how you trash a drive. Many hard drives have a really big flaw in their "recovery" method when they encounter an unreadable sector - they SLAM the heads against the limit of the disc at least once per bad read! So while Spinrite is sitting there blindly reading someteen-thousand "Discarded Samples" (with no end in sight mind you - this could go on all day!), the drive is destroying its flying head while repeatedly being told to read that same sector over and over again.
It's literally torturing the hard drive for information.
Often, the drives will "give up" and spin down to prevent further damage after a few hundred of these torture rounds. Spinrite then appears to hang, though the drive is no longer spinning. Spinrite doesn't do any sort of "hmm, how long are these operations taking? how long have I been at it? how long is the current operation taking?" timing analysis of its operations, which itself is a critical flaw. If it did more analysis of how long the operations take, it would know to "stick with what it got" and move on if each read-retry takes 15-20 seconds. Or if the failed reads are happening quickly, it could just progress with its usual sequence. Or if it usually takes 5 seconds to fail a read and it's been waiting for 30 seconds, maybe something failed in the drive.
All this information could be used to make Spinrite a viable product in 2011. As it is now, Spinrite 6 was released in 2004, and these glaring flaws made it obsolete even back in 2004 (the same drive technology was around back then as well). Since then, hard drive technology has changed dramatically: parallel recording technology, large (4kb) sectors with 512b emulation, more advanced SMART information in hard drives, all sorts of stuff. Spinrite is obsolete. But do we need to fix all the old, outdated information being passed around by noobs online in order to get Gibson to "get with the program" and address these flaws? All the past documentation, "explanation of the SATA thing" documents, etc., is irrelevant if it hasn't been written in the last 3 years. We need modern explanations to real problems, and the program to be updated accordingly. So maybe we need to "kill Spinrite" to get a new version produced?
67.181.184.205 (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: And you are proposing to change the article how? --DanielPharos (talk) 07:08, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The comments are detailed and specific and relevant to the article, but as one user's experience they clearly fall within "original research" and do not meet the criteria for inclusion. So this comment should be seen as a request for sourced information supporting or contradicting these points - does anybody have any sources? Detailed analysis of Spinrite (as against "I ran it and it repaired a problem" or "it didn't work") is very thin on the ground. Pol098 (talk) 11:19, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

text: The claims of "slamming the head" and "destroying the flying head" seem hyperbolic, also inaccurate.  There'd be no purpose in "slamming" a head against its stops, and it's pretty hard to destroy a head that's designed to use a ground-effect to avoid ever touching the disk platter.  Dropping the drive from a height while it's reading or writing, okay -- then you'd have the infamous "head crash".  But just operating the steppers?  Doesn't sound right.  They're designed to driven back and forth for ages.  71.162.80.74 (talk) 00:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  I believe he is talking about the infamous Click of Death; when the drive will kick the head out of the way if it detects a bad read just in case there are protruding dents on the disk's surface, to avoid damaging the head and to avoid spreading debris that could produce a miniature Kessler syndrome. --TiagoTiago (talk) 19:00, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

text: You recovered your drives in spite of SpinRite, not because of it. SpinRite is not, and never has been, a data recovery tool. A real data recovery tool will write recovered data to a healthy destination drive, never to the source drive. That's just a basic tenet that anyone who is knowledgeable in the field of data recovery understands. Moreover, real data recovery tools (such as ddrescue and HDDSuperClone) will recover the easy sectors on the first pass, skip over difficult areas, and then attempt the more difficult sectors on subsequent passes. They will not thrash each and every sector from beginning to end. That will only accelerate the failure of a weak head. 106.69.128.195 (talk) 09:10, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolescence, trashing drives, need to "kill Spinrite" to get a new version out? 

message: I see someone put in unverified claims of stolen code from hdd regenerator, and also conveniently "hijacked" a direct link to some site selling hdd regenerator.
This kind of trashtalk and blatant attempt to hijack credibility and sales seems "un-wikipedian" to me. It is slander and a very bad marketing scam.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.24.236.56 (talk) 07:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I bought "Spinrite" (under that name, no version number, now called v1) in about 1989; I remember that it was from Gibson. I probably still have a working (not original) 360kB/5.25" boot floppy somewhere, but I'll never find it. I found it very effective with MFM (pre-IDE) disc problems; I'm not sure how effective it is with later drives, which don't have the same problems (see my comments in previous threads). Pol098 (talk) 13:14, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  HDD regenerator (slander / marketing scam) 

message: WTF? ->
"However, if a hard drive's circuit board, drive motors or other mechanical parts are defective, or there is systemic file system corruption, SpinRite may be of little or no help.[3] In fact, in such circumstances no purely software-based solution would be sufficient to overcome the problem." 
I didn't expect that such of crap, why not add more warnings about you can't fix the hdd if not have electric power or under water  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.173.168.22 (talk) 00:40, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: unnamed

message: Steve Gibson. Security Now! Episode 194. . 2012-11-28. URL:http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-194.txt. Accessed: 2012-11-28. (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6CWohFCY9)
Steve Gibson. SpinRite Testimonials. . 2012-11-28. URL:http://www.grc.com/sr/testimonials.htm. Accessed: 2012-11-28. (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6CWokLmG3)
Given testimonial page is likely to change in future with newer content I'm linking an archived copy here for future discussion.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allne1972 (talk • contribs) 04:43, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cached Versions of Citations 

message: Per WP:CITEVAR about mixed formats I'll be reformatting all using Cs1. Also using cite episode to link show+transcripts. (The Unclear Citation Style tag has been in place since May 2012, the current citation style is predominantly non-italicised titles, and the first citations added to the article  were non-italicised). --Lexein (talk) 01:30, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation format 

message: Here is a deconstruction of the claims made in respect of SpinRite, together with references to tests which prove that, under some circumstances, SpinRite is data destructive.
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=2929
106.69.71.227 (talk) 20:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to integrate any new, verifiable information into the article. Please do note that the author of SpinRite has stated (in podcasts) and gone into detail that, yes, under some circumstances, SpinRite is data destructive. --DanielPharos (talk) 11:27, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deconstructing SpinRite 

message: "When a hard drive's ability to read data slows and or begins unreliable, SpinRite may recover data that then can be copied to another drive."
SpinRite does not recover any data to another drive. The author has stated that he intends to offer a cloning option in SpinRite 7, whenever that may be. 106.69.128.195 (talk) 18:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Features