New SpinRite Version 6.1

garioch7 · Sep 15, 2024

Steve Gibson has just released SpinRite Version 6.1, which works with SSDs and can improve their performance. The upgrade is free for SpinRite 6 customers. If you are a registered SpinRite Version 6 customer, you should receive an email with upgrade instructions. The upgrade was very fast. I then created a SpinRite Recovery CD with the new version.

GRC | Hard drive data recovery software

I last used it on an HDD many years ago. It recovered a significant of data and rendered the drive readable. My customer was very pleased, as was I.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Quandary · Sep 15, 2024

A very underrated and unknown utility that is ideal for any technical person to resolve HDD or SSD performance issues.

TM21 · Sep 15, 2024

I got my own Upgrade, for Free, several months ago.
Works good, but is not quite "There yet" for SSD's. Steve is still working on that. Ver 6.2 is yet to come!
It's definitely a 'Tech Tool' and not for the faint of heart, or nube.
I think I spent nearly $100 for my first copy of Spinrite. Its' really nice to get the latest ver. for FREE now.

It's a great program for "Proving" a drive that may be in question.

Cheers Mates!
TM

pseymour · Sep 15, 2024

TechnoMage2021 said:
I got my own Upgrade, for Free, several months ago.

It was a month ago, but yeah.

Using GRC ValiDrive To Assess USB Read/Write Performance

I have been using the free Gibson Research Corporation ValiDrive program to check USB flash drives for some time now to ensure that they have the indicated storage capacity. I recently had the occasion to copy some large HD video files to several older Kingston DataTraveller USB 3.0 flash...

www.elevenforum.com

hsehestedt · Sep 15, 2024

I'm waiting for version 7. My PC won't allow me to boot this since it uses FreeDOS. I need to Windows native version.

Quandary · Sep 15, 2024

TechnoMage2021 said:
Works good, but is not quite "There yet" for SSD's. Steve is still working on that. Ver 6.2 is yet to come!

Huh "not quite there yet"? There are complex technical workarounds if you are referring to the program working on NVME connected drives or the ability to run on a UEFI only PC (I have done both).

There is not expected to be a v6.2 as v6.1 is stable and bug free. The next version is expected to be v7 but that will likely be many years away.

TM21 · Sep 16, 2024

OH, then it's obvious that you know more about what Steve is working on than He does.

pseymour · Sep 16, 2024

Steve did say, in episode 928 of Security Now:

My goal has been to update 6 to 6.1, to resolve the problems with speed, the problems with drive size. And inevitably I ended up doing way more than that. But I said, "Understand this. My goal is to obsolete 6.1 as quickly as I can with 7.0 because there were some things we could not do. We could not do UEFI. DOS will not run on UEFI. Period. So in order to move to UEFI, we have to leave DOS."

Well, that's a big change. So that's not like an incremental - no one would call that an upgrade. And also I wasn't able to do native support for USB. So USB still runs through the BIOS, as all USB always has for all of SpinRite. But I want to get to 7.0 so I can resolve those things also. But it was just necessary to say, no, we're stopping at 6.1 and after that point my goal is to obsolete it as quickly as possible. And once everyone has 6.1, that'll be what they want, too. So it's a win-win.

Quandary · Sep 17, 2024

TechnoMage2021 said:
OH, then it's obvious that you know more about what Steve is working on than He does.

Apparently I can read his mind :boom:

neves · Sep 17, 2024

Took 20 years for an update - and still no UEFI support in 2024. Tho, I find the snake oil side of SpinRite concerning...

As in: https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2929

And here's a professional take on SpinRite - from people for whom Data Recovery is how they earn a living for past 20 years - while rated as 4.9/5 on Google reviews (500$ being their minimum recovery fee for the least troublesome recovery) - SpinRite - Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

"The other day, we had a drive that was failing MHDD testing. For the fun of it, we ran SpinRite on the drive to see how it would do. It ran for a day and when it completed, it reported the drive as healthy. We re-ran MHDD and, as you can see, the drive isn't quite as healthy as SpinRite reported."

"Here is another scary screenshot from SpinRite. What happens when each of those partially recovered sectors are from a critical database file. After the sector has be remapped (partially recovered), there is no way to go back and get anything that was lost. This is called data loss, not recovery."

"When a data recovery professional recovers your files and encounters bad sectors, we don't alter them...we do everything we can to get that sector to read and copy to another drive. If we need to, we can get the same partial data that SpinRite gets, but the difference is, if the data in the sector is critical, we can keep going back in hopes to get a better result."

:nope:

Quandary · Sep 17, 2024

neves said:
Took 20 years for an update - and still no UEFI support in 2024. Tho, I find the snake oil side of SpinRite concerning...

As in: https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2929

And here's a professional take on SpinRite - from people for whom Data Recovery is how they earn a living for past 20 years - while rated as 4.9/5 on Google reviews (500$ being their minimum recovery fee for the least troublesome recovery) - SpinRite - Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

All generally correct, but it is like suggesting that a hacksaw is a poor product because it does not cut lumber very well.

- Yes, if it took 20 years to produce an update (V6.1 has improvements over the older V6). Yes, there is no native support but there are technical workarounds.

- Agree that there will be a very small percentage of drives (mostly in very poor condition) that it will not be able to recover. But it is useful for the other large majority of drives that have started to have problems (maybe not yet detected). Someone that is prepared to spend thousands of dollars on a professional to recover their data has not been doing a very good job in maintaining their drives or having a robust backup and recovery strategy.

- There are countless reports of PC's with slow boot issues, many likely due to HDD/SSD issues that SpinRite would resolve. The question is should the user just buy a new drive, or spend that on a program which will maintain/recover any issues - on that drive or any others for the next 20 years?

Disclaimer: Recovery of my data is not worth hundreds or thousands of dollars (I have good backup), my drives are periodically maintained/refreshed with SpinRite (no failures), and the performance of my SSD's are brought back to factory standards after using this program.

neves · Sep 17, 2024

Quandary said:
All generally correct, but it is like suggesting that a hacksaw is a poor product because it does not cut lumber very well.

- Yes, if it took 20 years to produce an update (V6.1 has improvements over the older V6). Yes, there is no native support but there are technical workarounds.

- Agree that there will be a very small percentage of drives (mostly in very poor condition) that it will not be able to recover. But it is useful for the other large majority of drives that have started to have problems (maybe not yet detected). Someone that is prepared to spend thousands of dollars on a professional to recover their data has not been doing a very good job in maintaining their drives or having a robust backup and recovery strategy.

- There are countless reports of PC's with slow boot issues, many likely due to HDD/SSD issues that SpinRite would resolve. The question is should the user just buy a new drive, or spend that on a program which will maintain/recover any issues - on that drive or any others for the next 20 years?

Disclaimer: Recovery of my data is not worth hundreds or thousands of dollars (I have good backup), my drives are periodically maintained/refreshed with SpinRite (no failures), and the performance of my SSD's are brought back to factory standards after using this program.

More like... suggesting there's this magical hacksaw - which could fix a used broken car and return it to its former factory condition. Religious/cult like beliefs revolving around a piece of hardware or software - became quite popular in past 20 years (if not longer) - and based on the evidence at hand and many many years of controversial disputes - SpinRite definitely fits the bill...

And now I’m done with Steve Gibson (and SpinRite) – DiskTuna // Photo Repair & Photo Recovery

www.disktuna.com

DRevitalize vs HDD Regenerator come with same promises, for example HDD Regenerator claims:

- Fast drive problems detection.
- Ability to detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface.
- Ability to repair bad sectors (magnetic errors) on a hard disk surface.
- No data losses in any mode!
- Corrupted data recovery (making unreadable data readable)
- UEFI boot support
- Full SSD support
- SSD S.M.A.R.T. support
- Different speed tests
- Slow SSD problem correction
- Remote control through LAN
- User friendly intuitive interface
- Easy to use, no complex settings. You do not need to change a lot of complicated and unnecessary settings. We have already set up the product for you for best performance and results.
- The product ignores file system, scans disk at physical level. It can be used with FAT, NTFS or any other file system, and also with unformatted or unpartitioned disks.
- Prescan mode (very useful for fast determination of bad sectors location, if a hard drive has a large number of bad sectors. Saves your time. Bad hard drives are scanned in this mode even faster than good drives!)
- Drive statistics
- Starting process directly under Windows 10 / 11
- Bootable regenerating flash can be created from the program and used to automatically start regenerating process.
- Working with any existing file system without losses of any data
- Working with any operating system without losses of any data (bootable regenerating flash should be used for non-Windows operating systems)
- Automatic process resume in any mode
- Multiple hard drives support
- Real-time hard drive state monitor. HDD Regenerator realtime monitor is more powerful and precise than ever in timely prediction of hard drive problems.
- Other enhancements (including drive life indicator, temperature indicator, convenient range of sectors selection, bad SMART status indication, overheating indication, etc.)

One major difference: they actually delivered in terms of updates (both suitable for handling modern systems).

Even so... i would take some of their capabilities with a grain of salt (like the claims it can REVITALIZE PHYSICALLY DAMAGED MAGNETIC MEDIA). Along the years i tested this tools - multiple times (well, the updated versions - that is) - and neither was capable of miracles. Or at least - didn't make much difference compared to a free tool like Seatools (from Seagate) - at handling bad sectors. As it usually goes... "those who expect nothing - are surprised by any change" - while those who buy into the hype (big expectations) - are usually disappointed (there's no magic). Also, I truly doubt they can revert the damaged lifespan of an SDD (to factory standards as you put it). If anything, there's actually a destructive way - which proved to helpful even for SSDs as in... defragmenting. Shortens the lifespan (less impactful if defraging only the fragmented files - not the whole partition)- but there is a measurable improvement/benefit.

Quandary · Sep 18, 2024

neves said:
More like... suggesting there's this magical hacksaw - which could fix a used broken car and return it to its former factory condition. Religious/cult like beliefs revolving around a piece of hardware or software - became quite popular in past 20 years (if not longer) - and based on the evidence at hand and many many years of controversial disputes - SpinRite definitely fits the bill...

And now I’m done with Steve Gibson (and SpinRite) – DiskTuna // Photo Repair & Photo Recovery

www.disktuna.com

DRevitalize vs HDD Regenerator come with same promises, for example HDD Regenerator claims:

Well it works for me, does exactly what it states, and has never caused a problem. That is good enough for me.

Not sure why you seem to have a need to try and shoot down or disparage a product you have never used.

neves said:
..... Also, I truly doubt they can revert the damaged lifespan of an SDD (to factory standards as you put it). If anything, there's actually a destructive way - which proved to helpful even for SSDs as in... defragmenting. Shortens the lifespan (less impactful if defraging only the fragmented files - not the whole partition)- but there is a measurable improvement/benefit

Have a read about "read disturb" at this link or many others. Then decide if it is a real situation or not. If you agree that read-disturb results in the performance reduction of a drive (damaged lifespan) then wouldn't be nice to be able to bring the drive back to the original performance level (factory standard)? It is possible to do that with this program and it is NOT a destructive or defragmentation process. Investigate or not, I don't really care.

Almighty1 · Sep 20, 2024

Is SpinRite still slow? Well, SpinRite is supposed to also do non-destructive low level formatted which was something in Norton Calibrate that was later taken out of Norton Utilities/SystemWorks.

Quandary · Sep 20, 2024

V6.1 is significantly faster than the previous version.

It does not do low level formatting, retaining whatever formatting exists. There are 5 modes; Read only scan, Find any trouble spots and try to fix, rewrite all sectors, rewrite & then reread, flip bit & write then flip back & write. There are different recommendations on use for HDD vs SSD.

Almighty1 · Sep 20, 2024

It actually does low level formatting, that was how Spinrite had always worked. It basically moves the data to another sector while it analyzes it similar to how a defragger works. I have been using it since 1986 or 1987 or so... Here's even a thread about it:

Low Level formatting an RLL Disk

Normally when I Low-Level Format an MFM drive I hang it off one of my controllers that lets me invoke from the ROM using debug and I'm all set to go. I have a Miniscribe that has repeated issues reading back data I've written and I'm curious if a LLF will do it any good. I've never done an RLL...

forum.vcfed.org

Nevermind, looks like you are right....

neves · Sep 20, 2024

Quandary said:
Not sure why you seem to have a need to try and shoot down or disparage a product you have never used.

Where/when did i said - i never used it?!

Quite the opposite:

neves said:
Along the years i tested this tools - multiple times (well, the updated versions - that is) - and neither was capable of miracles.

Didn't try any of above in the last years - nor did i ever try them on SSD (SpinRite 6.1 is aimed at SATA SSDs anyway, some used VRM as a workaround - but that comes with its limitations as the dev Steve keeps mentioning - thus, one could blame it on that - while achieving less than optimal results).

Quandary said:
Have a read about "read disturb" at this link or many others. Then decide if it is a real situation or not. If you agree that read-disturb results in the performance reduction of a drive (damaged lifespan) then wouldn't be nice to be able to bring the drive back to the original performance level (factory standard)? It is possible to do that with this program and it is NOT a destructive or defragmentation process. Investigate or not, I don't really care.

Technically based on the way it works - defragmenting will also refresh the data - since every piece of data is read & rewritten depending on usage. Same goes for SpinRite using level 3:

Level 3 (the only mode where some benefits were noticeable)

Examine the entire partition and recover unreadable data and recover readable data and refresh the partitions data.This operation scans the entire partition, recovering all unreadable data,while also reading and writing all sectors of data within the partition. This has the beneficial effect of rewriting all existing data. And by bringing the drive’s attention to focus, in turn, upon every sector, the readability and writability of the drive’s entire surface region is tested, verified, and proven.

I guess that would explain why both have the same "beneficial" effect on an SSD, tho... you can also expect the same amount of wear (both equally destructive - if you will). So no, there's no magic - and it definitely won't bring it back to factory standard while lowering its lifespan. Maybe just close to factory speeds - at the expense of wear.

Steve keeps making contradictory statements regarding SSDs - if anything - the benefits (again, at the expense of wear - but he keeps ignoring this part) are incidental.

Not really surprising - since this software was designed with old tech in mind - even really old (didn't try it back then - so maybe an older version like 2.0 did have a bigger impact on old tech). Probably why enough people don't find it that useful even with modern HDDs (or at least - what SpinRite can manage - is also achievable with free tools made available by the HDD manufactures - even if not that aggressive). Even the upcoming version 7.0 - won't bring any major changes in terms of functionality, more like improving support - so it can run with UEFI natively, as for SSD - after using lvl 3 - will also trigger TRIM automatically (so you don't do this manually). SpinRite was simply not designed for SSDs, can't even make the difrence.

Quandary · Sep 21, 2024

neves said:
Where/when did i said - i never used it?! Quite the opposite:

Didn't try any of above in the last years - nor did i ever try them on SSD (SpinRite 6.1 is aimed at SATA SSDs anyway, some used VRM as a workaround - but that comes with its limitations as the dev Steve keeps mentioning - thus, one could blame it on that - while achieving less than optimal results).

Technically based on the way it works - defragmenting will also refresh the data - since every piece of data is read & rewritten depending on usage. Same goes for SpinRite using level 3:

Level 3 (the only mode where some benefits were noticeable)

Examine the entire partition and recover unreadable data and recover readable data and refresh the partitions data.This operation scans the entire partition, recovering all unreadable data,while also reading and writing all sectors of data within the partition. This has the beneficial effect of rewriting all existing data. And by bringing the drive’s attention to focus, in turn, upon every sector, the readability and writability of the drive’s entire surface region is tested, verified, and proven.

I guess that would explain why both have the same "beneficial" effect on an SSD, tho... you can also expect the same amount of wear (both equally destructive - if you will). So no, there's no magic - and it definitely won't bring it back to factory standard while lowering its lifespan. Maybe just close to factory speeds - at the expense of wear.

This is tiring, but I will bite.

1. My bad about your user of SpinRite, sorry.
2. Areas of disagreement/conflict seem to be;
- 20 years to update. Better late than never
- no UEFI support. Correct, but there are involved workarounds that are full function for SSD in a UEFI only PC
- Level 3. Yes this is the option needed to bring an SSD back to initial performance levels (better term than factory standard). Yes, write) are destructive but considering the expected lifespan of the drive this operation performed a couple of times per year is a minimal. The process is beneficial if has increased the performance over the high use areas of the drive by 30-50%. I am ok if the shortens the life of the drive by 3-6 months.
- not sure what statements made by Steve concern and why this is an issue. The impact on SSD's was a learning process. Initially it was thought that Level 3 on an SSD should be avoided, just like Level 5 on an HDD, a conservative position. Subsequently during the development testing of 6.1 the benefits were discovered. Nothing wrong in changing a position.

So bottom line, based on the stated product claims do you recommend that the product not be used and why?

neves · Sep 22, 2024

Quandary said:
This is tiring, but I will bite.

The irony...

Nah, more like bark (making noise - but nothing to show for). You started quoting a post with evidence of SpinRite's failure in practice (as shown by reputable professionals) - without offering any counter-argument (some evidence stating otherwise). Same goes for all the other posts - where you ignore every solid argument. Even wasted my time - checking GRC and posting Steve's own quotes - yet, you keep reading between the lines. Your last post makes no sense at this point (not adding anything - not actually saying anything worth answering - just talking for the sake of talking). 89$ for a heavily outdated DOS app - while there's so many feature-rich and actually capable alternatives - some even at half the price - yet updated and improved multiple times on a yearly basis (Hard Disk Sentinell - for example) - sounds more like a post purchase bias (only conclusion that make sense). Whatever, since i don't find this conversation constructive in the slightest (a complete waste of time) - i'm done replying.

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