SpinRite
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SpinRite 6.0
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| Developer(s) | Gibson Research Corporation |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1987 |
| Stable release |
6.0 / June 7, 2004
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| Preview release | none (none) |
| Written in | x86 assembly language |
| Operating system |
Included FreeDOS (doesn't use OS of host PC) runnable from DOS |
| Platform | Any PC |
| Size | 0.169 MB executable, 1.40 MB bootable disk image with FreeDOS OS |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Hard disk recovery |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
Included FreeDOS (doesn't use OS of host PC)
SpinRite is a computer program for scanning magnetic data storage devices such as hard disks, recovering data from them and refreshing their surfaces. The first version was released in 1987 by Steve Gibson. Version 6.0, still current as of January 2017[update], was released in 2004. SpinRite is run from a bootable medium (floppy disc, optical disc, bootable external storage device such as a USB stick) on a PC-compatible computer. Spinrite uses its own operating system and ignores any boot loader or file system structure that may be on the drive being examined.
SpinRite was originally written as a hard drive interleave tool. At the time SpinRite was designed, hard drives often had a defect list printed on the nameplate, listing known bad sectors discovered at the factory. In changing the drive's interleave, SpinRite needed to be able to remap these physical defects into different logical sectors. SpinRite therefore gained its data recovery and testing capabilities as a side-effect of its original purpose. Gibson states that today, drive interleave is no longer an issue, but the data recovery features of the tool proved to be so useful that it evolved into the data recovery tool that it is today.
SpinRite tests the data surfaces of writeable magnetic disks, including IDE, SATA, and floppy disks. It analyzes their contents and can refresh the magnetic disk surfaces to allow them to operate more reliably.
SpinRite attempts to recover data from hard disks with damaged portions that may not be readable via the operating system. When the program encounters a sector with errors that cannot be corrected by the disk drive's error-correcting code, it tries to read the sector up to 2000 times, in order to determine, by comparing the successive results, the most probable value of each bit. The data is then saved onto a new block on the same disk; it cannot be saved elsewhere. In this respect SpinRite differs from most data recovery software, which usually provides (and recommends) an option to save the recovered data onto another disk, or onto a separate partition on the same disk.
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Wikipedia