Hardware

Is that you need the right type of Data Recovery Software to do the job that you are trying to do. There are different types of Data Recovery Software for different jobs.

The common one scans the HDD and saves found files. Some of these can be fragmented and useless but it will recover them none the less.

The less common type and far more expensive rebuilds Partition Information and is considerably faster.

Finally the last type of Data Recovery Software does a Forensic Recovery which is very slow and time consuming.

Then there are tools to do more advanced Data Recovery so here one program isn't the be all and end all of Data Recovery you need to chose the right tool for the particular job that you are attempting. This is why Data Recovery Houses get the Big Bucks because they do it right to begin with.

Col

The question that you need to answer is, "What SPECIFICALLY are my data recovery needs in THS situation?

I have a damaged backup drive. This is a problem because all of my video from a very important event is on that drive. What I know right now is that the drive was dropped and will not power on. It is not impossible that the data on that drive is now corrupt as a result of the drop- it occurred while the drive was on. I need to ask some searching questions of real experts in order to know what my next steps need to be. Umm... Col???

That is one kind of problem.

I accidentally deleted important files (or the files were deleted by someone else. There's another kind of recovery problem. In that case, there are commercial products available that *may* recover those files. The good news is that better vendors have a trialware version that you can download and check to see if your files are recoverable... before you drop around $100 on the software.

The volume is corrupt or logically damaged. Tougher to manage but not entirely a lost cause. A good starter question is, "How important is that data anyway?" Some recovery tools might be able to overcome the problem- and the use of those tools is free until you actually want to recover something. Forensic data recovery is extremely expensive but well worth it for critical data.

So what is your need?

i know the difference between data losses

i am not talking about accidental file deletions, they are simple to recover (assuming minimal data was written to the drive after)

i am talking about using spin rite in combination with a corrupt/dying hard drive/bad memory blocks.

I have used spin rite on hard drives with bad memory blocks and hard drives that were not recognized by the OS and other situations that i cant remember but i know i have tried many times over the course of owning spin rite and it never helped my situations.

When you are looking at failing hardware. When that is happening you need to remove the drive strip it down in a Lama Flow Cabinet and then go about reading directly off the Platters.

Not something that a Home User or even a very qualified IT Pro is capable of doing or willing to spend the money on for something that they rarely use.

Col

in what scenarios should you use spin rite then?

I though Spinrite's hayday was pre IDE when capacities were measured in megabytes and platters were little more than magnetic tape on a disk.
I thought once IDE drives arrived low level access from software to disk surface became non existant.