[ale] what exactly does a long smart hdd test do?

[mike at trausch.us]

On 05/14/2012 02:17 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> SpinRite could never cause physical damage to the drive unless
> physical damage already existed, or unless just exercising the heads
> caused them to crash.

This is only true in the case of media that is *extremely* non-contact
for read.  For example, optical media.

For magnetic media, your assertion is not true today, has never been
true in the past, and is extremely likely to never become true.  Contact
or near-contact conditions are required to read magnetic media, unlike
optical media where the drive's "head" is a laser emitter that is
positioned quite some distance away from the media relative to magnetic
media technology.

There was a utility from Norton years ago that made claims very similar
to what SpinRite does.  IIRC it was called the Disk Doctor.  I've seen
it destroy dozens of media, both floppy and hard, in the same way that
Mike Warfield described his situation.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 729 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20120515/eb602d3d/attachment.bin