All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Thanks to a new customer that needs a computer built, I finally got the extra $89 I needed to purchase one copy of SpinRite 6.0. (It’s not for her, it’s for me.)

Why? For preventative maintenence. (That is a term, right?) Anyway, if a HD is going to fail, I’d like ample to time buy a new HD, move my data onto it, and put the dying one out of service. Also, I’m guessing that if Windows is having errors, it might be because there’s some bad sectors on the HD that need to be marked and put out of service.

Yesterday, I ran Level 4 on my new Seagate 120GB HD. I didn’t know what exactly was going on, but after trying to read everything from the SpinRite section, I felt pretty convinced that it’s worth every penny. I did have to stop it a few times, so I just jotted down the percentage and what partition of the HD it was on. Then when I took off from home, I rebooted to SpinRite and resumed where it left off. I figure I’ll run Level 4 every three months, and Level 1 every other week.

Today at work, I brought my old IBM 40GB 120GXP HD to run SpinRite. I initially stopped using it because it wasn’t being detected anymore. I figure that maybe I could check it out, get the results, and ask SpinRite support if I should even consider using it anymore. Well, during the scan, the DynaStat Recovery System was initiated and was going through one sector for a long time. It’s taking a reallly long time, but if it means I’ll be able to use it in my system again, that’d be cool, right?

Ok, ok, so I’m weird. I haven’t lost any data, and yet I’m still using this product anyway. Well, it just seems worth it to me. I’m hoping that I can use this 40GB HD in my system again (for Windows), then dedicate the 120GB HD strictly for data. Wouldn’t that be nice? Oh well, time will tell.

Oh yeah, if you’re a consultant, the software license information page explains that you need 4 copies of the latest version. I don’t see that happening, so if my customers want it, I guess they’ll just have to buy it for themselves.

Is this a review? I don’t know. But I figured I’d share in case anyone had some insight, or were thinking like me.