SpinRite

One of those things to tuck away for future reference, in case it’s ever needed.

A question was posted on the company’s technical discussion mailing list, asking what the best way would be to recover data from a failing USB external drive, without resorting to professional data recovery services.

It turned out that chkdsk /f was sufficient, but SpinRite was brought up as something to try. The current version can work with multiple file systems, apparently including the one used by Tivo (Media File System? I don’t remember.)

This is handy to know about and have in the back pocket: one problem with WinXP is that one can’t RAID at the software level, and the current workstation doesn’t have a hardware RAID controller installed. I have one of those eggs-in-one-basket feelings every once in a while, even though I do off-site backup, etc.

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