How fast is SpinRite?
At its maximum depth of operation, performing a complete read/write/read/write for data recovery and surface analysis/verification, SpinRite can obtain extremely high speeds of up to 2 gigabytes per minute, or 120 gigabytes per hour. However, that is SpinRite’s maximum speed and many things can cause it to run slower and, in some cases, much slower . . . If SpinRite hits areas of the drive that require attention, it will pause to take as much time as required to recover data, verify the region, and cause the drive to replace any damage with new spare sectors. If the system’s or drive controller BIOS does not support UDMA (ultra direct memory access), all data transfers will probably be slower, if the drive does not support read and/or write caching and/or read-ahead, SpinRite’s operation will be slower. And if the drive is non-IDE or running over a USB or Firewire link, SpinRite will likely run slower. So 2 gigabytes per minute is a best-case speed with a modern drive, high-performance
