OIT Software Licensing is evaluating the current and prospective usage of SpinRite.
SpinRite is a stand-alone DOS program designed to refurbish hard drives, floppy disks and recover data from marginally or completely unreadable hard drives and floppy disks and from partitions and folders which have become unreadable.
A site license for SpinRite has been requested through our new software evaluation request form (http://oit.duke.edu/comp-print/software/request/it_request.php) for central funding/distribution, and we put together a wiki with some information on the software and some of the purchase options.
If you are interested in this software or have considered purchasing this before, we invite you to visit the wiki and comment on it. The information that we collect in this manner will help us determine whether or not central funding and distribution would be beneficial to the Duke community.
Wiki: https://wiki.duke.edu/display/OITSLP/SpinRite
Summary of Wiki: A nationwide site license requires that at least 10 copies of the latest version be purchased by the organization. For worldwide use, that number is 20. It is highly possible that Duke analysts and departments have collectively purchased enough licenses to qualify for site license status, and if that is the case then it can be distributed centrally through OIT. If approved, OIT could be responsible then for purchasing the necessary upgrade licenses when the time comes. It appears that new versions are seldom released. If you have proof of a license or would like to voice your support for this software being centrally available, please comment on the wiki.