If you listen to the Security Now podcast, Steve Gibson often says it hasn't seen an update because it hasn't needed an update. I'd imagine there's at least some truth to that. Drives change all the time, but does hard drive interface technology change all that much?
Yes, he SAYS that but it's not true which is part of what irks people. It has needed an update for a long time. He or Leo on the podcast have long said or implied 6.0 is more or less "bug free." But for example, read spinrite forums about unrecoverable division overflow errors, divide by zero errors that pop up with a red background. "Try updating your bios" or "try it in another computer" is the typical advice given, not a fix. And I think there is a drive size limit that has long been an issue.
> If you listen to the Security Now podcast, Steve Gibson often says it hasn't seen an update because it hasn't needed an update. I'd imagine there's at least some truth to that. Drives change all the time, but does hard drive interface technology change all that much?
It definitely needed one. I briefly had it several years ago, and I don't think it supported large disks that were common then (maybe 2TB was its limit) and it did not also support GPT partition tables.
Years ago I bought Spinrite. Past the 30 day return policy I was disappointed to learn that it was limited to 2TB HDDs. At that time most of my HDDs were larger. I asked about an upgrade and was told "Real Soon Now." Years ago. I asked for a refund and was told (paraphrasing) "you took too long to determine that Spinrite doesn't meet your needs."
Back in the day before integrated drive electronics, Spinrite was very useful for adjusting the sector interleave to improve disk performance. With drive electronics and management firmware improvements, Spinrite was useless.
> Steve Gibson often says it hasn't seen an update because it hasn't needed an update.
However, Gibson released 6.1 a month or so ago https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm