Understanding SpinRite Drive Processing Levels

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Adam-F

Active member
Sep 25, 2020
34
3
UK
Hi All,


I ran spinrite 6.1 for the first time last night, on a WD 1TB drive.

Please can someone please explain the following, about drive processing levels?

Level 2 - 3 hour processing time

Level 3 - 14 hour processing time

Level 4 - 24 hour processing time

Level - 29 hour processing time

With the drive been a terabyte in size and larger drives on the market what level would be advised for a damaged drive?

Please note that this drive is 100% healthy.

Also how is S.M.A.R.T monitor, enabled on the drive as it was disabled during the process.

Please see attached screenshots.

Thanks :)
 
what level would be advised for a damaged drive?
If the drive is damaged and you're hoping to recover data from damaged sectors, start with level 2. Level 1 is a read only pass, and will not attempt data recovery. Level 2 is level 1 as long as the drive is functioning correctly, but if it encounters a damaged sector, it will attempt multiple reads to see if recovery is possible. I recommend this level for recovery because it is the least stressful option for the drive. Once you recover whatever you can, you can then use the higher levels to cause the drive to rewrite itself. Levels 3, 4 and 5 do progressively more rewriting, thus the reasons why they take longer and longer.
 
Levels 3, 4 and 5 do progressively more rewriting, thus the reasons why they take longer and longer.
I agree with Paul. For Hard Drive recovery, Level 2 is what you want. Level 3 preforms a rewrite of everything that SpinRite has read and recovered. That can be useful when a drive requires “refreshing” — this can be useful for “spinners” but many people are discovering that it's amazingly useful for recovering an SSD's original performance.

Beyond that, Level 4 performs an additional final reread of what Level 3 wrote and Level 5 first rewrites the original data "inverted", rereads it to verify that, then re-inverts it back to its original state, writes and rereads it. Level 5 is useful for really “wringing out” a drive and for testing a spinning drive's surface for any defective storage regions.

In general, I'd recommend Level 2 for “data recovery” either spinners or SSDs and Level 3 for recovering SSD original performance.
 
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Also how is S.M.A.R.T monitor, enabled on the drive as it was disabled during the process.
I'm confused about this sentence. Are you asking "How does SpinRite monitor SMART"? Also, are you saying that SMART stopped working during one of the scans?

Please see attached screenshots.
Your screenshots did not show up. I believe the maximum file size on this forum is around 500 kB.
 
Thanks for the detailed explanations.

@ColbyBouma I was referring to the default SpinRite message about S.M.A.R.T monitor not displaying any details but it was still functioning.

I was unable to upload screenshots due to file size.
 
Level 5 is useful for really “wringing out” a drive and for testing a spinning drive's surface for any defective storage regions.
Would it be wise then to run Level 5 on NAS drives before putting them into play?
 
Would it be wise then to run Level 5 on NAS drives before putting them into play?
Yes. If you have multiple drives, then I recommend also running the benchmark and comparing the drives to each other. If there's a large difference, that could be a sign of an issue. You can enable automatic benchmarking in SprinRite's settings.

Also, be prepared to wait. Level 5 can easily take multiple days on large drives.