"Jasen Betts" wrote in message
...
On 2015-10-31, Ian Field wrote:


"Jasen Betts" wrote in message
...
On 2015-10-30, Ian Field wrote:


While on the subject of software - I'm looking for an ISO for a
bootable
CD
with HDD wipe utilities.

So far my searches have only found demos and paid versions.

A guy at work swars by "dban" same dude also thinks spinrite is a good
thing to
run on failing media, so take that with a grain of salt.

ATM: I'm not trying to sort out flaky media - and I have Spintite 6 for
when
I do.

It works well most of the time, but gets tangled up on 1Tb or bigger.

It also gave a clean bill of health to a Samsung 500Gb drive that had a
habit of misplacing allocation chains.

If the media's dying spinrite will just wear it out.
a better plan is to use with one of the programs
called ddrescue to copy everything onto stable media.

I wanted to find out if that Samsung was stable media - Spinrite said it
was, despite the fact that it wasn't.