Disk not recognised running Spinrite as a Proxmox VM

[itm60]

I just purchased Spinrite 6.1 as I’d read that it could be run as a Proxmox (8.2.5) VM (I used the Bootable utility to verify this before purchasing).

I have now booted into my Spinrite VM, having passed through the physical disk that I would like scanned/repaired – it’s a 2TB Western Digital spinning SATA drive. FYI I used this command to pass through the disk, which appeared to be accepted:

qm set 105 -scsi8 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD20EURS-63S48Y0_WD-WCAZAH996825

The disk shows up in the hardware list for the VM:

The problem is that this disk is not visible to Spinrite:

Does anyone know if what I am trying to do is possible with Spinrite 6.1? If so, any idea what I might be doing wrong?



Is this something that is not supported?

 

[Scott]

I just purchased Spinrite 6.1 as I’d read that it could be run as a Proxmox (8.2.5) VM (I used the Bootable utility to verify this before purchasing).

I have now booted into my Spinrite VM, having passed through the physical disk that I would like scanned/repaired – it’s a 2TB Western Digital spinning SATA drive. FYI I used this command to pass through the disk, which appeared to be accepted:

qm set 105 -scsi8 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD20EURS-63S48Y0_WD-WCAZAH996825

The disk shows up in the hardware list for the VM:
View attachment 1386
The problem is that this disk is not visible to Spinrite:
View attachment 1385

Does anyone know if what I am trying to do is possible with Spinrite 6.1? If so, any idea what I might be doing wrong?



Is this something that is not supported?

It looks like you’re attaching this disk to a SCSI controller in the VM. Spinrite does not have SCSI drivers. Can you attach this as a virtualized SATA or IDE drive?

 

[ColbyBouma]

I recommend passing the entire SATA controller through with PCI Passthrough.

PCI(e) Passthrough - Proxmox VE

pve.proxmox.com

 

[cschuber]

I recommend passing the entire SATA controller through with PCI Passthrough.

PCI(e) Passthrough - Proxmox VE

pve.proxmox.com

This would be the ticket. Even then, the hypervisor may still sanitize communication. This may still be an issue with an app like Spinrite. I wouldn't be surprised that it won't work even with PCI passthrough.

 

[itm60]

Unfortunately passing the whole SATA controller to the Spinrite VM is not an option, due to the impact on the other VMs which also require it.
:0(

 

[Scott]

I’m not familiar with Proxmox, but I wrote up the SpinRite under VirtualBox instructions. If you look at those posts you’ll see that VirtualBox provides a virtual SATA controller to which you can map any physical drive on your system regardless of its actual physical connection to the hardware (SATA, SCSI, USB, NVMe) via the vboxmanage createmedium command.

Can you do likewise in Proxmox?

 

[itm60]

I’m not familiar with Proxmox, but I wrote up the SpinRite under VirtualBox instructions. If you look at those posts you’ll see that VirtualBox provides a virtual SATA controller to which you can map any physical drive on your system regardless of its actual physical connection to the hardware (SATA, SCSI, USB, NVMe) via the vboxmanage createmedium command.

Can you do likewise in Proxmox?

I'm not aware of a way of adding a virtual SATA controller to Proxmox, but I'm not a proxmox expert TBH!

 

[miquelfire]

Replace the scsi8 with sata0 (number can be 0 to 5). You might need to add a SATA controller to the VM

 

[itm60]

Replace the scsi8 with sata0 (number can be 0 to 5). You might need to add a SATA controller to the VM

Ah yes I did try that (from a suggestion on the Proxmox Reddit). This resulted in Spinrite hanging when trying to detect Storage Devices.
I am not aware of a way of adding a SATA controller to a VM (although I did specify SATA as the bus/device when creating the VM.

 

[Bplayer]

Is the disk actually a SCSI drive? If not then it maybe the VM identifying it as one is the problem.

There may be some config changes that will allow it to work but it seems like you are fighting with Proxmox VM. How about archiving that disk and following the steps provided by @Scott to run SpinRite on a UEFI PC with either a VM using Windows or Unix.

 

[itm60]

Is the disk actually a SCSI drive? If not then it maybe the VM identifying it as one is the problem.

There may be some config changes that will allow it to work but it seems like you are fighting with Proxmox VM. How about archiving that disk and following the steps provided by @Scott to run SpinRite on a UEFI PC with either a VM using Windows or Unix.

No it's a SATA drive. Unfortunately I don't have the spare hardware to leave Spinrite running for hours at a time - hence the appeal of being able to run it on my Proxmox server. It looks like I may have to give up on the idea :0(

 

[Bplayer]

It may be tricky to get the VM emulation correct but keep trying. There should be a way to get the drive correctly defined in the VM and then SR should be happy.

 

[itm60]

It may be tricky to get the VM emulation correct but keep trying. There should be a way to get the drive correctly defined in the VM and then SR should be happy.

The method that I'm using to pass through the drive is tried and tested - it works for both Ubuntu and Windows VM's. It's just Spinrite that doesn't detect the drive

 

[PHolder]

I don't have the spare hardware to leave Spinrite running for hours at a time

This juncture seems as good of time as any to tell you that Steve used a little mini-SoC type PC for his development of SpinRite, and they sell for around $100 if you should want a dedicated SpinRite machine. (Of course that means you need to extract drives from other machines to run SpinRite on them.) If the idea interests, search for ZimaBoard on these forums.

 

[Scott]

The method that I'm using to pass through the drive is tried and tested - it works for both Ubuntu and Windows VM's. It's just Spinrite that doesn't detect the drive

Because Ubuntu and Windows have SCSI drivers. SpinRite does not.

 

[ColbyBouma]

Does your Proxmox machine have room for an add-on SATA controller (PCIe)?

 

[itm60]

Does your Proxmox machine have room for an add-on SATA controller (PCIe)?

Yes it does. Would Spinrite be more likely to detect that than the onboard SATA controller?

 

[ColbyBouma]

Yes it does. Would Spinrite be more likely to detect that than the onboard SATA controller?

Yes, if you pass the entire controller to the VM with PCI Passthrough.

 

[fantac06]

I am also testing out spinrite to see if it will work for my use. I have got it kind of working in proxmox.
First of all change the disk pass through in the VM back to scsi
In the proxmox vm go to hardware and find scsi controller to Default (LSI53C895A)
Then boot spinrite and it is able to see the disk in 6.1
Can you try the same to confirm?

-----------------------
The problem I'm running into is that I can only see disks that are 2TB and less. Actually the 4TB disk shows as 2.2TB.
I think this is maybe the limit of the virtual bios that proxmox is using (seabios) But not sure if it's a spinrite issue or not.
I may not be able to use spinrite until 7.0 version
As you said passing through the disk as sata only hangs spinrite on the detecting disks
It seems the machine I'm using for proxmox doesn't have the ablity to pass through the SATA controller as it shows No IOMMU detected. Not sure if my motherboard can pass that through

 

[PHolder]

can only see disks that are 2TB and less. Actually the 4TB disk shows as 2.2TB

This is a BIOS limitation. If SpinRite can use its own driver for IDE or SATA then it will move beyond that limit.