Update on Spinrite 6.1

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FlyingPenguin
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Update on Spinrite 6.1

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Steve is getting very close to a beta release. Thousands of people have been running his ReadSpeed benchmark, which is also a testbed for the new code he's going to use to read & write to the drives for Spinrite.

He's been hung up for a few weeks because two people with the same old Asus mobo, and an ancient Pentium II class (I think) CPU, were getting unexplained lockups running it. Steve wound up buying the same mobo from Ebay and figured out it was some kind of bug, either in the CPU or the chipset, that would fail to return from a particular instruction. So he rewrote the code to use a different instruction, and that fixed it.

If you want to follow what's happening, he's posting updates on his new forums here: https://forums.grc.com/
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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Executioner
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Re: Update on Spinrite 6.1

Post by Executioner »

Thanks! I've been waiting for years for the new 6.2 release, or will it be version 7?
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FlyingPenguin
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Re: Update on Spinrite 6.1

Post by FlyingPenguin »

From his roadmap:

SpinRite v6.1 will be a no-charge update of v6.0. During the 16 years since v6.0, the GPT
(GUID partition table) has become popular and drives have grown massive with advanced
capabilities including pure solid-state, hybrid solid-state with magnetic storage and physically large (4K) sectors. SpinRite v6.1 will “catch up” to re-fulfill SpinRite’s original promise made back in 2004. Specifically, with some limitations for USB & NVMe, SpinRite v6.1 will offer:
• Native AHCI and IDE support, with BIOS support fallback for USB, NVMe and others.
• Operates on the physical drive surface to provide compatibility with ANY drive format.
• Practical use on drives of =ANY= physical size. (~ 0.5 terabytes per hour)
• Support for drive advancements: Hybrid drives and large physical sector drives.
• Absolutely maximum possible performance – no missed revolutions.
• Support for (older) Apple Mac Intel hardware which supports Boot Camp / CSM.
• Downloadable as an .ISO for boot media prep on non-Windows systems.
• Minimal changes will be made to SpinRite’s user interface so that its new functions can
be provided as soon as possible. But the many changes will be very apparent in
SpinRite’s performance and its ability to see much more deeply into its client drives.

SpinRite v7.0 will extend SpinRite’s reach to the growing number of newer PCs that have dropped support for the traditional BIOS and no longer support DOS in any form. SpinRite will be rewritten as a client of a 32-bit real time operating system, able to boot on any BIOS or UEFI system natively. v7.0 will be a paid upgrade, with no-charge upgrade protection for recent SpinRite v6.x purchasers.
• Booting and operation under BIOS and UEFI.
• Native high-performance drivers for IDE & SATA drives.

SpinRite v7.1 will extend SpinRite’s maximum-performance reach by adding hardware
drivers for USB. This will empower SpinRite to function at maximum possible speed on any drives connected to those interfaces.
• Native driver support for USB OHCI/UHCI, EHCI and xHCI motherboard controllers.


SpinRite v7.2 will further extend SpinRite’s maximum-performance reach by adding
hardware drivers for solid-state NVMe mass storage. This will empower SpinRite to function at maximum possible speed on any drives connected to those interfaces as well.
• Native driver support for NVMe solid-state memory.

Release timing:
As noted above, our goal is to make SpinRite v6.1, v7.0 and v7.1 available in succession as quickly as possible, though, in truth, we have no idea what that translates to on the
calendar. Unlike other companies, GRC is not driven by management, it’s driven by
technology. So, all we can promise is that the projects above are top-of-mind and are our
primary focus and attention.
"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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