From the AEGIS e-Journal, Volume 7 Number 9, September 2004
SpinRite 6.0 Steve Gibson Gibson Research Corporation $89.00 http://www.grc.com/ 1-949-348-7100 Hard drives have the bad habit of occasionally dying, at best causing inconvenience, and at worst taking with them important data that should have been backed up, but wasn’t. In most cases the crash is not caused by a mechanical failure, but, rather, by an increasing number of sectors which have gone bad, eventually rendering the drive useless. SpinRite addresses this problem in two ways. The first is prophylactic. The program directly reads and stores the data from each sector – bypassing the system software that can sometimes mask problems – and then tests the sector. If the test is successful, the data is returned. If the test fails, the data is put into a clean sector and the sector marked as bad. SpinRite contains a good deal of sophisticated logic to get all possible data from a sector. In essence this helps assure you that all of your data is safely stored. This brings us to SpinRite’s second feature, the ability to recover data from a dead drive. Because of SpinRite’s ability to do direct reads of sectors – including multiple reads, repositioning the heads to find spots at which a read is possible, and a host of other tricks, SpinRite is often able to either recover a lost file in its totality, or with minimal loss, or with a statistical reconstruction of a given sector, disaster is often avoided. Shortly after getting SpinRite, we had a drive go bad in three critical sectors. SpinRite made it work again, with no data loss. In many cases, use of SpinRite for recovery will avoid the necessity of spending thousands of dollars to send the disk to a lab for reconstruction. As it worked out, sometime after getting the software, we had a machine give us the dreaded message that it couldn’t find the drive, and that we needed to insert a book diskette. We ran SpinRite in recovery mode, and it booted up properly. We then ran it in maintenance mode, and it found three bad sectors. It recovered the data and marked the sectors as bad, and we were back in business! ÆGIS, September 2004 15 SpinRite is the only product of its kind. According to the documentation, “SpinRite is able to operate on all Windows XP NTFS formats, all DOS FAT, all Linux file systems, Novell, Macintosh (if temporarily moved into a PC) or anything else — it can even be used to repair and recover the hard drive from an ailing TiVo!” SpinRite goes into the must-have category. If your people aren’t using SpinRite, tell them they should. 7. Free-Subscription/Unsubscription/Copyright Information •• ÆGIS e-journal is supported and maintained by voluntary efforts. This publication is owned, published, and copyright © 2004 by The LUBRINCO Group Ltd, Inc. and Financial Examinations and Evaluations, Inc. It is edited jointly by Richard Isaacs (RBIsaacs@lubrinco.com) and L. Burke Files (LBFiles@lubrinco.com). The LUBRINCO Group provides services in three high-threat areas, too specialized to be dealt-with in-house, that can adversely affect domestic and international bottom lines. • OPSEC: The identification and protection of information that would give your competitors and adversaries an advantage. o Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. o Protection of trade secrets and intellectual assets. ♦ Anti-competitive intelligence. ♦ Anti-economic espionage. • International financial investigations and due diligence consulting. o Location and recovery of missing and hidden assets. o Establishing business relationships and strategic partnerships in Central and Eastern Europe, the offshore financial centers, Beijing and Shanghai, Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. o Anti-money laundering and financial fraud requirements under the International Money Laundering Abatement and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act of 2001 and the EU Revised Money Laundering Directive of 2001. • Protection of management, staff, and families. o In the high-threat environments of Latin America, Africa, the Mid- East, and Southeast Asia. o When traveling and living overseas. ÆGIS, September 2004 16 LUBRINCO identifies and quantifies threats and vulnerabilities, and their associated risk, then manages the vulnerabilities so you can transfer or live with the residual risk. We prevent disastrous financial loss to your company, and physical harm to you, your family, and your staff. For information on The LUBRINCO Group and its services, or for the archive of all past issues of ÆGIS e-journal in PDF format, please go to http://www.lubrinco.com/. To sign up for a complimentary subscription to ÆGIS e-journal or the ÆGIS e- journal PDF notification list, go to http://lb.bcentral.com/ex/manage/subscriberprefs?customerid=7768 or send an email to ejournal@lubrinco.com. To subscribe to our AvantGo channel, go to http://avantgo.com/channels/_add_channel.pl?cha_id=1773 To be removed from the subscription list, follow the instructions on the mailing you received, or send an e-mail to ejournal@lubrinco.com. 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ÆGIS, September 2004 17 Article Title, from the September 2004 ÆGIS e-journal (© 2004 LUBRINCO & FEE), to be found at http://www.lubrinco.com/. ÆGIS e-journal is a forum for the exchange of information, ideas, operating styles, theories, and related topics for corporate managers who make decisions about threats typically outside the expertise available in-house, yet which have the potential to affect their company’s domestic and international bottom lines. Nothing appearing in ÆGIS e-journal should be construed as legal advice. The information provided is “general information,” not “specific advice.” The solution to any problem is highly dependent upon the precise facts involved. Thus, before making any reliance upon anything said here, you should consult with an appropriately skilled professional. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher, and may be presented to encourage a dialogue among subscribers. The publisher and any re-publisher cannot be held responsible for any loss incurred as a result of the application of any information published in ÆGIS e-journal. Please be safe, and be smart.