Spinrite.

[Anders Holmberg]

Hi!
I will give grml a try as the ntfs partition on my western digital elements usb drive has gone south.
I can't get it back with testdisk so maybe some  other tools might work.
Thats why i was asking about spinrite.
I really don't want to pay 10000 swedish crowns for getting a ntfs partition back.
Though the files on that partition is really important to me.
/A
30 dec 2013 kl. 14:59 skrev Janina Sajka <janina at rednote.net>:

> I have no beef with SpinWrite. I see no reason why we can't have
> multiple tools for particular tasks. However, the discussion was about
> the accessibility of the tool, a particular concern on this list,
> naturally enough. On that score, I think there's little question
> remaining that the native Linux tools prove the function required
> without presenting an accessibility challenge.
> 
> Janina
> 
> eric oyen writes:
>> spin rite is a nice tool for those who are computer users only. Us power users tend to get a bit more down and dirty with the hardware level codes than most.
>> 
>> Badblocks has a couple of nice options that will allow you to mark off bad areas and write that info into a file that can also be used by mkfs when you go to make a new filesystem. These are utilities included by default in any Linux distribution. Also, all these utilities are command line and are quite accessible without the need of a special interface driver on a desktop. These are also available as command line utilities on just about every OS X machine around. Can't say that for windows.
>> 
>> -eric
>> 
>> On Dec 27, 2013, at 6:08 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Well, I still don't see that it does anything special. For instance, if
>>> you're worried about bad blocks, the command badblocks is perfectly
>>> useful for just that.
>>> 
>>> Janina
>>> 
>>> Tim Chase writes:
>>>> On December 27, 2013, Janina Sajka wrote:
>>>>> use standard Linux tools, e.g. e2fsck and the
>>>>> smartmontools like smartctl.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This approach is fully accessible.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, what does spinWrite give you that you can't do per the above?
>>>> 
>>>> Spinrite operates on the drive at the hardware level rather than
>>>> filesystem-level (checked by e2fsck) or partition level.  I'm less
>>>> familiar with smartctl, but it appears to offer some overlap in
>>>> functionality with Spinrite.
>>>> 
>>>> In a way, the basic first level scan could possibly be replicated with
>>>> "dd", reading the entire drive (/dev/sda) rather than a partition
>>>> (/dev/sda1) and dumping the results to /dev/null which would force
>>>> the drive to read every byte.  This triggers the drive to look at
>>>> every byte, check the drive's integrity at that location, and let
>>>> the hardware move the data in the event that spot is getting hard to
>>>> read.  Based on the manpage, it sounds like smartctl might offer
>>>> some similar functionality.  Beyond that, I believe that Spinrite does
>>>> more aggressive scans that will persist in an attempt to read data,
>>>> even when the drive returns hardware errors, and can actively talk to
>>>> the drive controller to move that data elsewhere in the event it had
>>>> trouble, then mark the blocks as bad at the hardware level.
>>>> 
>>>> Again, I'm only taking a stab in the dark based on the tidbits I've
>>>> picked up on the SN podcast (which is well worth a listen, IMHO).
>>>> I've never used the product, but at least the guy who wrote it seems
>>>> to know what he's doing and make difficult technological topics
>>>> accessible.
>>>> 
>>>> -tim
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
>>> 			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
>>> 		Email:	janina at rednote.net
>>> 
>>> Linux Foundation Fellow
>>> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
>>> 
>>> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
>>> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
>>> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Blinux-list mailing list
>>> Blinux-list at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>> 
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina at rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair,	Protocols & Formats	http://www.w3.org/wai/pf
> 	Indie UI			http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/
> 
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> Blinux-list mailing list
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> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list