SpinRite

SpinRite is a hard disk scanning and data recovery utility first created by Gibson Research Corporation in 1988, with the latest version 6 having been released in 2004.

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SpinRite is a program that tests and analyses the data surface of hard drives. Though most easily comparable to CHKDSK or fsck, SpinRite does not examine the file system for errors.

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SpinRite is much more thorough in its surface scans than basic utilities and has the further capability of being able to recover data from damaged portions of hard disks that might not otherwise be read by the operating system.

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The program itself is very compact, written in x86 assembly language. Though compatible with hard disks formatted in virtually all modern formats, it can only be run under DOS on PCs. Version 6 includes a Windows utility to create a FreeDOS boot disk for the program.

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Hard disk: A hard disk drive (also hard drive, or hard disk drive (HDD)) is a non-volatile data storage device that stores data on a magnetic surface layered onto hard disk platters....

Gibson Research Corporation: Gibson Research Corporation or GRC is a computer software development firm founded in 1985 by Steve Gibson. GRC has created a number of niche utilities over the years, the foremost of which is SpinRite, a hard disk scanning and data recovery utility....

1988: 1988 is a leap year starting on a Friday of the Gregorian calendar....