How To: Boot a Mac into FreeDOS for Bootable, SpinRite or ReadSpeed (Part 1 of 3 - Intro)

[bobbyb]

Well, I was able to see the USB selection in the boot menu, and selected it, but did not get any video, from either the HDMI, or a DisplayPort to VGA adapter. Decided to pause on that, and go the VM route. This is on a Mid-2011 Mac Mini. Well, I decided to try VirtualBox and build a bootable USB drive with VB & everything on it. Only thing is, the VB 7 doesn't run on High Sierra, the last supported OS on this hardware, and the 'RawDisk' parameters in the instructions are not in earlier versions of VB.

I have a version of a bootable Monterey that works on the Minis, but I hate having multiple levels of ... non-standard code to get this working.

I could do the Linux or Win2Go installs if someone thinks those are easier based on my systems (all 3 systems I want to spinrite the SSDs are 2011 minis) then I'll go that route. I guess I'm looking for a workaround of VB Rawdisk for these systems. If you guys think using my OCLP Monterey to do VirtualBox would be easier, I'll go that route.

TIA

 

[Scott]

Well, I was able to see the USB selection in the boot menu, and selected it, but did not get any video, from either the HDMI, or a DisplayPort to VGA adapter. Decided to pause on that, and go the VM route. This is on a Mid-2011 Mac Mini. Well, I decided to try VirtualBox and build a bootable USB drive with VB & everything on it. Only thing is, the VB 7 doesn't run on High Sierra, the last supported OS on this hardware, and the 'RawDisk' parameters in the instructions are not in earlier versions of VB.

I have a version of a bootable Monterey that works on the Minis, but I hate having multiple levels of ... non-standard code to get this working.

I could do the Linux or Win2Go installs if someone thinks those are easier based on my systems (all 3 systems I want to spinrite the SSDs are 2011 minis) then I'll go that route. I guess I'm looking for a workaround of VB Rawdisk for these systems. If you guys think using my OCLP Monterey to do VirtualBox would be easier, I'll go that route.

TIA

You could use VirtualBox 6.1.x on a High Sierra USB drive. Use the vboxmanage “clonemedium” command instead of “createmedium” (same command, older syntax)

Oracle® VM VirtualBox User Manual for Release 6.1 - Chapter 7 VBoxManage

 

[sobrien60]

Has anyone tried to boot a new non-Intel Mac into "target disc mode" then attach it as an external USB drive to a Mac running SR6.1 ? Will the spinrite-Mac see the external USB through Thunderbolt, and will this still have the 137Gb limit for external USB drives?

 

[Scott]

Has anyone tried to boot a new non-Intel Mac into "target disc mode" then attach it as an external USB drive to a Mac running SR6.1 ? Will the spinrite-Mac see the external USB through Thunderbolt, and will this still have the 137Gb limit for external USB drives?

I don’t have an Apple Silicon Mac, but as I understand it those machines don’t have a Target Disk mode. Instead they can be booted into a Share Disk mode, and appear to the other Mac not as a physical drive but as a network drive, so I don’t think that would work.

How to Use Target Disk Mode and Share Mode on Mac Computers - Datarecovery.com

Target Disk Mode is a special boot mode for Intel-based Macs (and an option in macOS Recovery on Macs with Apple silicon) that allows you to connect one Mac to another and use the first Mac as an external storage device. This lets you quickly transfer large amounts of data between the two...

datarecovery.com

 

[sobrien60]

I easily booted an old Mac with SpinRite6.1 and had a major graphics error in the memory check, or it may have been a system crash. The screen was mostly black with wild white noise on the left. Thinking that maybe the memory check didn't work on the Mac I rebooted and exited as quickly as possible. I started a level 4 scan and it worked great for about 10 minutes, then exhibited the same graphics screen. Any opinions on whether this is a real fail and a crash, or do you think SR is running fine but the graphics has some bug?

 

[Scott]

I easily booted an old Mac with SpinRite6.1 and had a major graphics error in the memory check, or it may have been a system crash. The screen was mostly black with wild white noise on the left. Thinking that maybe the memory check didn't work on the Mac I rebooted and exited as quickly as possible. I started a level 4 scan and it worked great for about 10 minutes, then exhibited the same graphics screen. Any opinions on whether this is a real fail and a crash, or do you think SR is running fine but the graphics has some bug?

Mine (mid 2012 MacBook Pro) does the exact same thing and I thought it was my machine, which is why I didn’t put a warning about that behavior in my instructions. I’ll change that now that you’ve seen the same thing.

I also tried using the command line switch to skip the memory check but SR failed during the spinrite operation just as it did for you.

On the other hand, I can do everything just fine when running in a virtual machine under MacOS so you may want to try that.

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-run-spinrite-on-a-uefi-only-machine-part-1-of-5.1613/

 

[Batson]

Scott's original post mentioned hit or miss success depending on the brand of USB stick. I'm currently trying a Patriot Supersonic Rage Lite 64GB and so far no joy. I was wondering if anyone is aware of a posted list of winners and losers. Thanks in advance!

 

[Scott]

Scott's original post mentioned hit or miss success depending on the brand of USB stick. I'm currently trying a Patriot Supersonic Rage Lite 64GB and so far no joy. I was wondering if anyone is aware of a posted list of winners and losers. Thanks in advance!

What type and year of Mac do you have, what OS version is installed, and did you disable SIP?

 

[Batson]

Yep - followed your excellent tutorial and it went just as written. When it came time to boot, the mid 2010 Macbook Pro showed a black screen with a white spinner at the bottom center of the screen (not a beachball). After 7 minutes I assumed it was a fail and powered off. Figured I'd try some brands other than Patriot.....

 

[Scott]

Yep - followed your excellent tutorial and it went just as written. When it came time to boot, the mid 2010 Macbook Pro showed a black screen with a white spinner at the bottom center of the screen (not a beachball). After 7 minutes I assumed it was a fail and powered off. Figured I'd try some brands other than Patriot.....

For a mid-2010 vintage, you may want to try creating a SpinRite CD and booting from that. You’ll need a windows pc to create the CD image (ISO file), and then of course you’d have to burn that to a CD

 

[Batson]

Thanks for that! Can do - I have access to multiple Windows and Mac machines. I also reformatted the Patriot Spinrite 6.1 USB stick and took another run at the mid 2010 Macbook Pro. The disk list showed me 2 identifiers on the USB. Blessing disk2s1 resulted in the I/O info error. Blessing disk2 resulted in the "no bootable device" screen. Please see pics. BTW, if you happen to remember any of the USB stick brands that worked, I'd appreciated hearing them. Thanks again!