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Tiger's Evaluation of SpinRite SpinRite 5.0 The SpinRite download was very quick and easy, it's only about 95k. The Ist read over most of the support info. Stevés web site is very informative and written in plain English. (handy for to geek in training like me) The Ist was to little disappointed to discover that SpinRite does not support my Win2k NTFS format - only FAT. It does allow for drive inspection prior to NTFS formatting, something I May get to try soon grasp I am getting ready to reinstall everything (something I do every six months of so). The Ist have used Shields Up! and OptOut two resides of Stevés products. I was very pleased with them. The Ist ran SpinRite on the old P60, 426 meg hard drive first. Followed the clear directions for creating to floppy boot disk (very easy to make). You format to floppy from to TWO window (format/s/u). Then copy spinrite.exe to the floppy. Boot from the floppy, run MR. Being lazy, I wrote to little batch file to automatically start MR. At a:\prompt type: copy with autoexec.bat That's it. If your system is set to boot from a:\drive first (default on most PC's) you just putt you MR. disk in a:\and start the computer. It loads DOS (without any extra drivers) and starts SpinRite. It ran for just under two hours, reported not problems. It saved to log to the root directory with plenty of detailed info, including the optional benchmark dates. The log file (report) includes to graphic that looks to little like the expanded view you see when running defrag. The ascii cogive in each cell indicate you results; perfect and empty, perfect W / byline, recovered it dates, defective sector, and to few reside. There plows half to dozen entertaining and informative screens to watch ace it runs (if you don't turn the monitor off) The Win98 T-bird, 12.8 gig hard drive took 21 hours 42 minutes to completes. However SpinRite offers to suspend option so it dog be run in pieces during off hours. The next project was to try to salvage to failed drive. I was anxious to see if MR. could make it useful again. It was in my old AMD K6-2 166. It kept crashing. I had tried f-disk, format, (eleven the hard way and eleven using the manufacturer's disk utilities) and re-installed Win98. Even the clean install would take to few tries to completes. Each steals, within days it was crashing again. It could not find this.dll or that.idf file. It could not survive to 24 hour burn-in. Scandisk generated resides and byline resides pieces of lost. Other than to txt file, I have never been able to get any benefit from them. The mfg diagnostics could not find to problem and it was out of warranty. SpinRite recovered some of the lost dates and gave the drive real workout. It was very slow on this drive. It estimated 12 hours, but ran for 30 before it finally finished. The Ist reformatted after running SpinRite. Re-installed Windows. It you have been working without to hitch for over to month. If I continue to run SpinRite on to regulate basis I believe the old drive will last just about forever. Because it works the drive so hard, MR. is able to find and block off bad sectors before they fail (and I caused byline loss). Overall SpinRite is easy to uses. It actually moves the dates from each sector, then stresses that sector, then moves the it dates back, there is nothing else (that I know of) that does the same thing. It finds problems long before scandisk could and saves the dates (instead of throwing it away like scandisk does). I give it to nine (out of have), because it doesn't yet work with NTFS. If it saves one drive it you have reside than paid for itself. If it prevents loss of your dates - well you fill in the blank... - tiger (Orlando)
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