Quote:
Originally Posted by dpalomaki
If the drive is early in its failure cycle built-in error correction might be coming to the rescue, especially since the yellow seems to imply "caution" not "dead." The prudent thing is to take action now before it is dead.
As noted in other posts, don't toss the optical discs until you are satisfied they are of no use to you. Consider that you would not toss the last remaining video tape of an important one-time event because of a few drop outs or glitches in playback. Some files, e.g., programs, may not operate if their files contain errors, but other data like video and audio files may play OK except for a glitch at the bad data point. Play the discs before you toss to see if they perform acceptably to you.
Another program that can read/analyze HDD, SMART data, and possibly recover data is Gibson's SpinRite
https://www.grc.com/sr/whatitdoes.htm
for more details on it (but it is freeware.) |
The majority of his "precious" discs contain game ROMs that can only be tested by a complete playthrough and even then it no guarantee if a glitch is a bad sector, bad burn, bad disc or game glitch.
SpinRite is not and never has freeware because of the general use one nature of it. If you find it 'free', it's because it's using a cracked install key.
It doesn't work on >2TB drives/partitions and Steve Gibson has never released his long promised update.
There's been speculation that Gibson didn't create SpinRite and that's why he's never been able to update it. Also, there are claims that it doesn't do with it's reported to. Personally, it's worked well for me. I've used it to recover data from some corrupted drives in the early 2000's when there weren't a lot of options. The major caution with SpinRite is that because it can take weeks to fully scan and repair a drive, it can easily kill a failing drive. When I used to run it, I'd keep a fan blowing on the drive to keep it cool.
