Closed An experimental test release (SRPR-EX1)

[Steve]

SpinRite has still been stumbling when it encounters drives that are in very bad condition. In every case, their owners already know that the drive in question is no longer useful — other than to test SpinRite. So we all want SpinRite to do the best thing possible, even with seriously troubled drives.

I spent the day carefully watching the error return codes from Western Digital and Seagate drives. What I learned has been incorporated into an experimental test release of SpinRite: “SRPR-EX1.EXE”. I haven't published it yet as a pre-release because it's really only of any use or interest to anyone who has a drive that's been stumping SpinRite — meaning it believes that the drive has gone offline or into Device Fault status when it apparently hasn't.

So, if you're interested, you can obtain this experimental release the usual way, by going to GRC's /prerelease.htm page, entering your SpinRite serial number, and obtaining single-use links. HOWEVER, rather than clicking on the link for the DOS "SRPR-EXE" you must COPY the link, paste it into your browser's URL field, then edit the filename to: SRPR-EX1.EXE which will deliver this test release to you.

If it does anything different, good or bad, I'm all ears! Thanks!!

 

[sweeney746]

I ran it on the same 3TB drive and it stopped at the same spot. No keyboard or mouse input locked up. This drive doesn't have any problems.

 

[Steve]

I ran it on the same 3TB drive and it stopped at the same spot. No keyboard or mouse input locked up. This drive doesn't have any problems.

We're now at pre-release 5.05 and, so far, everyone has been reporting that places where previous releases got into trouble, SpinRite is now successfully plowing through. So... Could you give the current release (5.05) a spin?? Thanks!!

 

[sweeney746]

We're now at pre-release 5.05 and, so far, everyone has been reporting that places where previous releases got into trouble, SpinRite is now successfully plowing through. So... Could you give the current release (5.05) a spin?? Thanks!!

Ran 5.05 on a 120GB drive with errors. It didn't finish, stop about 70% trying to repair a bad sector. Keyboard quite taking responses and it's locked up. Now I'm running 5.05 on the good 3TB drive again to see if stops again on level 4.

 

[sweeney746]

Ran 5.05 on a 120GB drive with errors. It didn't finish, stop about 70% trying to repair a bad sector. Keyboard quite taking responses and it's locked up. Now I'm running 5.05 on the good 3TB drive again to see if stops again on level 4.

Ran 5.05 on 3TB level 2 and finished with no error. Ran it again at level 4, didn't finish and quite taking response and locked up sooner then older version.

 

[Steve]

Hmmmmmm.... Did the little graphic “spinner” in the upper right corner stop spinning? ... or did it continue with its animation? And how are these drives connected to the machine? Are they connected via USB? Or parallel IDE or serial SATA cable?

Thanks!!

 

[sweeney746]

Hmmmmmm.... Did the little graphic “spinner” in the upper right corner stop spinning? ... or did it continue with its animation? And how are these drives connected to the machine? Are they connected via USB? Or parallel IDE or serial SATA cable?

Thanks!!

Yes it stop spinning. Using a old Asus, intel P4 with 2gb of ram. The 60gb and 120gb are connected directly with IDE. Both have problems. The 3tb is connected directly with SATA cable. No problems with hard drive, it will finish on level 2 but will NOT on level 4. I haven't tried my 10tb since the first time I got 6.1,

 

[Steve]

@sweeney746: The graphical “spinner” is driven by the lowest-level hard interrupt system. It's the most "reliable" indicator of "life" in the system. I asked about USB connectivity since USB uses the BIOS and some USB BIOSes deliberately disable hardware interrupts during drive error recovery... so we sometimes see the “spinner” pause its spinning then resume.

But you're seeing this total freeze up on two different non-BIOS drive technologies, parallel IDE and SATA. That means that SpinRite's own native drivers are being used and that SpinRite is never handing over control to the BIOS. And SpinRite never disables hardware interrupts.

Is there any way you could try doing what's causing the hang on that machine — on any other machine?

I dislike pointing fingers elsewhere, since that's not the way to find every problem. But so far, we don't have any other reports of any sort of hang like this, despite many people also running SpinRite over their very troubled drives. So the wildcard is that old Asus Pentium 4 machine.

If you can get a different machine to hang, then it's likely not the machine — it's SpinRite. But if SpinRite running on a different machine on the same drives doing the same thing never hangs, then I think that narrows the trouble down to that P4 machine.

Thanks!!!

 

[sweeney746]

@sweeney746: The graphical “spinner” is driven by the lowest-level hard interrupt system. It's the most "reliable" indicator of "life" in the system. I asked about USB connectivity since USB uses the BIOS and some USB BIOSes deliberately disable hardware interrupts during drive error recovery... so we sometimes see the “spinner” pause its spinning then resume.

But you're seeing this total freeze up on two different non-BIOS drive technologies, parallel IDE and SATA. That means that SpinRite's own native drivers are being used and that SpinRite is never handing over control to the BIOS. And SpinRite never disables hardware interrupts.

Is there any way you could try doing what's causing the hang on that machine — on any other machine?

I dislike pointing fingers elsewhere, since that's not the way to find every problem. But so far, we don't have any other reports of any sort of hang like this, despite many people also running SpinRite over their very troubled drives. So the wildcard is that old Asus Pentium 4 machine.

If you can get a different machine to hang, then it's likely not the machine — it's SpinRite. But if SpinRite running on a different machine on the same drives doing the same thing never hangs, then I think that narrows the trouble down to that P4 machine.

Thanks!!!

Just ran the IDE 120gb on an old ASUS AMD. A different computer didn't help. It errored at the same spot. I'm run the IDE 60gb now. I will run the 3TB an ASUS PK5 with 8gb of ram in a couple of days. It's in the process of recovering the 10TB files after it failed.

 

[Steve]

@sweeney746: I'm worried that we may be talking about different events and behavior. When you say:

Just ran the IDE 120gb on an old ASUS AMD. A different computer didn't help. It errored at the same spot.

THAT is exactly what I would expect when you ran the same drive on a different computer. THAT red dialog showing that the drive has done offline is a problem that we would expect to “follow the drive” no matter where you run in.

The “try it on a different computer” issue I was referring to was the “total freeze” of SpinRite that you previously described. Did THAT happen at any point or time on this other machine?? Thanks!!