Replies

Thanks for posting the Reflect X “deals”.

Assuming I understand the details correctly, the real “gotcha” is that there is no future price guarantee.

Only the discount deal remains for future renewals – but the price may increase (or decrease??).

As others have mentioned, my MR v8 (w/perpetual license) works fine on Win10/11 now and likely for the foreseeable future (at no additional cost) – so I’ll pass on the Reflect X “upgrade”.

 

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PL1

Reinbeau wrote:

Everyone has been sold on the thought that we ‘need’ to be able to stay connected 24/7. No we really don’t.

Absolutely true! I spent at least the first 50+ years of my life disconnected and never once was a problem.

The “Gabb” phone sounds ideal for kids – and many adults.

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Slowpoke47, Cybertooth

Susan Bradley wrote:

The article has now been made public.

Thank you Susan!

Not being ungrateful, but it would also be great if each article in each newsletter had it’s own URL.

samak wrote:

raise the age of social media users to 16

Yes, great idea. But how will it be enforced? A screen asking for confirmation of age is useless and absurd. Same with porn sites, etc.

Cybertooth wrote:

@unbob, if you purchased SpinRite at some point, you should still be able to use it at no extra cost, as the license doesn’t expire. And depending on which version of SpinRite you purchased all those years ago, you may even be able to upgrade to SR 6.1 for free.

Yes, correct. I downloaded v6.1 for free!

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Cybertooth

bbearren wrote:

RetiredGeek wrote:

It pays to keep good records!

Indeed!  I purchased SpinRite on 3/30/2011, still have the purchase receipt email.  I just downloaded v6.1, and will give it a go soon.

>>>edit<<< Unfortunately, my MB does not support legacy USB, only UEFI.  But on upside, SpinRite 7.0 (coming soon, hopefully) will support UEFI.

Me too! I purchased SpinRite on 4/17/2007, still have the purchase receipt email.  I just downloaded v6.1 (for free!), and will give it a go when I get some time.

Cybertooth,

“The description makes this program sound very much like Steve Gibson’s SpinRite, the main difference being that SpinRite works only outside of Windows in its own OS environment. Given its emphasis on working without having to exit Windows, I’d wager that DiskFresh was conceived as an alternative to SR.”

Yes, I’m familiar with SpinRite and actually purchased it many years ago. Assuming everything Steve wrote in the SR overview is true, it’s apparent that SR is much more “sophisticated” than DF and actually functions as a data recovery product whereas DF only “refreshes” the existing data with a simple read/write of each sector.

It seems that if you’re only objective is to safely preserve your data – as opposed to recovering “lost” data, DF should suffice at no cost (home user) vs a high cost for SR.

PaulK wrote:

1: Per the link: a) available July 2013; b) Windows XP to 8, and 2012 Server.

2: Shingled Magnetic Recording – SMR – was introduced September 2013.

3: Would this function be advisable on a SMR disk?

Good question. I’m running Win10 Pro 22H2. I’ve recently run DiskFresh on SMR external drive with no apparent problem.

How would reading/writing a sector be different for SMR vs CMR?

Re this statement: “DiskFresh is not the first program to do this, but it is the first program for the PC that allows you to continue to use the drive while the refresh is being performed”

Anyone here know of other program(s) that function similar to DiskFresh? I don’t.

RetiredGeek wrote:

I tested it overnight and it took 6 hours 39 minutes to process a 500GB WD Green 3.5″ drive. I may give a 1Tb drive a spin this evening.

And keep in mind that running in ‘Read Only Mode’ will complete in much less elapsed time.

I finally did a Macrium Reflect image restore of my ‘C’ drive (partition) from a backup created only 5 days earlier – and it eliminated the failing system restart. Problem solved!

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TechTango

One more thing … I plan to do a forensic analysis of my Windows event log to see if I can identify the cause of this “mishap”. If anyone can recommend software that would assist in that task – please post here. Thanks!

Update: I finally did a Macrium Reflect image restore of my ‘C’ drive (partition) from a backup created only 5 days earlier – and it worked! Problem solved!

I wasted a lot of time before doing the restore – but not really. I learned a lot in the past two days so I guess it was time well spent. (?)

Lesson learned: I will henceforth do a system restart at least once or twice a week to assure I discover a restart failure sooner rather than later. Also, will do an image restore before spending a lot of time exploring other possible recovery methods. Maybe schedule system backup every other day instead of just twice a week. Differential backup runs in ~5-10min so no big deal.

Thanks for all the replies! Much appreciate.

TechTango wrote:

Sysinternals autoruns provides a deeper look at what apps/programs are starting on boot than Task Manager does. Just click the “logon” tab on the Sysinternals main screen. You might might find a single likely suspect. It can be temporarily disabled for boot up testing.

Yes, I use autoruns also. I’ll take a look-see there also. Thanks!

bbearren wrote:

I’ve used that solution on a number of occasions, and it works just fine. …. Having the OS on a separate partition avoids losing any data when an image is restored. ….  Having the OS on a separate partition also makes restoring an image a matter of less than 5 minutes. After the restore, everything works as it should. …. There is nothing that beats a drive image for solving problems. Also, I do not allow automatic driver updates (blocked in Group policy), so I know that a driver has not caused any of my occasional problems.

Another excellent post! Agree with everything you said and I do the same – including blocking driver updates – don’t “fix” if it ain’t broke!