[svc0]

I've always been curious why people so fervently dislike Gibson. I think the most genuine criticism is that Spin-Rite is not a backup solution and people may rely on it as such. Ideally, no one should need it since all data should be replicated and backed up. Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable.

[Side Note: He also once claimed in a "testimonial" that a special ops team recovered data off of a hard drive during a mission in which they hit a terrorist with a computer.]

That being said, he produces a free security podcast which is quite good. He knows his stuff.

[pdonis]

> Any drive can fail at any time for any reason and it may be totally unrecoverable.

While in principle this is true, I have been using hard drives for more than 30 years now in PCs and I have never had one fail. I still back things up to separate drives since there's always a first time, but I've never used SpinRite or any other extra "protection" over and above what my OS provided.

[svc0]

There are stats on failure rates and bathtub curves. Consumer hard drives these days have an AFT of ~1.41%. Never used SpinRite and I don't know if there is evidence for it but I suggest you backup your data.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-...

[icecube123]

The podcast is great. Provides great information and is more than happy to provide corrections when some calls him on it. Takes a very scientific approach to issues.