Len Lawrence wrote:
This is a bit off-topic maybe. Somebody mentioned SpinRite the other
day in the context of disk recovery so I investigated the grc.com
site. Apparently SpinRite 6.0 supports Linux filesystems via a DOS program,
but the user does not need to own DOS. It sounded like worthwhile
insurance, so I paid for the licence and downloaded the .exe and went
back to the site for information on how to use it. Nothing doing, so
I emailed support only to get the runaround. No actual help, just a
pointer to the author's email service. On closer inspection it turns
out that he does not answer individual queries, so support is actually
non-existent. And, his last email bulletin dates back to the beginning
of 2002, before SpinRite 6 and before Linux support. ??
My assumption was that the file should be turned into an ISO and burnt to CD. That would leave the question of DOS. The files at bootdisk.com all seem to be .exes, which I assumed are self-extracting versions of DOS to be copied to a floppy, which would require Windows or DOS to run, and a FAT partition as well.
The grc.com is directed to Windows users and all tools are written for Windows users. I don't think the author expected Linux users would download it as well.
The Q&A section is still answering Spinrite 5.0 related questions, and the answer upon if Spinrite supports Linux in that case is ofcourse wrong, yes 5.0 does NOT support Linux, 6.0 does, but the executable currently only works with windows.
It can be used to create a bootable floppy where it installs the Spinrite disk examinator. The floppy boots with FreeDOS and gives you the opportunity to recover or maintain your harddrive.
(Like recovering erased files that weren't supposed to be erased)
Mr. Gibson may need some notice that his tool is not only acquired by Windows users.
It may or may not work under Wine, i don't know for sure, but one who has SR 6.0 can test this. I have SR 6.0, but currently i don't have XWindows installed anymore (sorry, installed Trustix :P)
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