[prosaic-hacker]

TLDR: 30% success rate for a $89 expense over 200 drives in 15 years is more than enough anecdotal evidence to say it was worth it.

I bought it 15 years ago and have run it on about 200 drives. My anecdotal results are in thirds with about equal results for drives(both spinning and ssd) that have measurable slowdown from new. 1. No visible improvement of the situation. 2. Moderate improvement in speed or identification of "bad sections of the drive". 3. Significant improvement in speed or readability.

For the third group especially backup times were horrible or failed so the idea of doing the backup not the rescue first were not successful so we had no option but try the recuse.

In this case after the rescue the backup worked. I then backup up the backup because one copy is not enough (min 3 on different media and at least one offsite). Then restore/image the disk and boot up the system with a new disk and put the old one on a shelf until you have appropriate back ups of the new one. Then destroy the old one so no one can use it.

30% success rate for a $89 expense over 200 drives in 15 years is more than enough anecdotal evidence to say it was worth it.