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 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Email: janina@xxxxxxxxxxx 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@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list