Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2015-10-31, Ian wrote:


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

Horse manure.
There is no wear on the media - there is NO CONTACT.
If bytes are hard to read, multiple reads with track re-positioning
and heuristic recovery would beat whatever "ddrescue" may do.