Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1932 mails)

["Carlos E. R." <robin.listas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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The Wednesday 2008-07-02 at 12:24 +0200, jdd sur free wrote:

> Robert Smits a écrit :
>
> >  Spinrite is a stand-alone DOS program designed to refurbish hard drives,
>
> the question is wheter it is possible or not to work with hard drives at a 
> lower level than the OS usually do. I think it's possible, but probably only 
> with maker specific software (on the factory). There are probably hidden 
> api/entry points in the firmware.
>
> It's possible also with special firmware loaded by a hardware interface 
> plugged in place of the original one, but this is probably far out of the 
> scope of any userspace sofware (even under dos)
>
> >  by the disk drives' error correcting code it tries to read the sector up
> >  to 2000 times,
>
> this is where it can easily kill a used disk...

Absolutely!

>  and tries to determine the most probable value of each bit by
> >  comparing the results. The data is then saved onto a new block of the same
> >  disk; it cannot be saved elsewhere.
>
> this is plain stupid, saving on a dying disk! dd_rescue do the same but it's 
> extremely suggested to write the data on an other disk
>
> and dd_rescue is *extremely slow*

Yes, because each failed sector read is tried 10 or 20 times, with a 
reset each time. The head moves to the track and to the beginning 10 or 20 
times for each failed sector, I think (my ear thinks).

- -- 
Cheers,
       Carlos E. R.
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