How To: Run SpinRite on a UEFI-only machine (Part 1 of 5)

[Lachy]

No, I have an old unused Intel Mac available for the purpose of running SpinRite. Actually, I have a couple of them laying around not doing much.

I was asking if I could simply boot off the internal drive instead of having it be an external drive. The 2015 MBP is not being used for anything else, so it has nothing to lose if I tried.

I actually want to run it against some external USB HDDs that have become slow to read over time. However, the only windows machine I had temporary access to so far doesn’t support USB drives from the bios and spinrite couldn’t see them.

Anyway, target disk mode is a good idea. I have 2016 and 2018 Intel MacBook Pros, both of which have USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports and support target disk mode. Plus I have a few Thunderbolt cables already. The 2015 MBP has Thunderbolt 2 ports (not USB-C), and I don’t have the cable or suitable adapter for that one.

I will try it with those and report back.

 

[Scott]

No, I have an old unused Intel Mac available for the purpose of running SpinRite. Actually, I have a couple of them laying around not doing much.

I was asking if I could simply boot off the internal drive instead of having it be an external drive. The 2015 MBP is not being used for anything else, so it has nothing to lose if I tried.

Sure you can. The convoluted instructions are a way to run SpinRite against the primary internal drive, because the SpinRite target drive can’t be used by any other process during SR operation.

If your target drive(s) are external (not the boot drive), then just install VirtualBox on your standard boot drive and point it at your other drives, using the same commands I noted before to ensure those other drives are offline.

 

[alexT]

I don't have an external SSD, but I do have an old, unused 2015 Intel MacBook Pro available. I tried unsuccessfully to get it set up on a USB Flash Drive, but the installation of macOS on that failed with a boot loop repeatedly ending in a kernel panic. Is there any possible way to modify these steps to have SpinRite installed on and booting from the internal SSD?

Alternatively, would I have better luck with the Linux option on a USB flash drive?

Not exactly sure what you are trying. You want to boot the machine from a USB stick ? With what OS ? To eventually test the internal SSD ?

 

[alexT]

Part 2B step E11 does include those diskpart related instructions, and yes it sounds like the OP skipped that

I believe I did all "by the book" but restarded from scratch and now all is working as expected. Thanks

 

[Lachy]

If your target drive(s) are external (not the boot drive), then just install VirtualBox on your standard boot drive and point it at your other drives, using the same commands I noted before to ensure those other drives are offline.

I thought about this, but it didn't seem so straight forward because the instructions make a lot of assumptions about it being installed on an external drive.

The introduction clearly states: "Ensure that the internal drives of the host machine are UNMOUNTED, so that the actual OS does not interfere with SpinRite operations"

Then when I got to step 4B, it talks about unmounting the internal drives.

That makes sense if I'm booted from an external drive because unmounting them won't break anything, but not so much when I'm actually booted from the internal drive. And since I don't fully understand all the reasons behind why these things are done, trying to blindly modify them for my own purpose seemed unlikely to succeed. That's why I was curious about how exactly these steps should be modified to work directly from the internal drive.

 

[Scott]

I thought about this, but it didn't seem so straight forward because the instructions make a lot of assumptions about it being installed on an external drive.

The introduction clearly states: "Ensure that the internal drives of the host machine are UNMOUNTED, so that the actual OS does not interfere with SpinRite operations"

Then when I got to [/B]step 4B, it talks about unmounting the internal drives.

That makes sense if I'm booted from an external drive because unmounting them won't break anything, but not so much when I'm actually booted from the internal drive. And since I don't fully understand all the reasons behind why these things are done, trying to blindly modify them for my own purpose seemed unlikely to succeed. That's why I was curious about how exactly these steps should be modified to work directly from the internal drive.

I’ll edit the instructions to state that the need for an external drive is based on the assumption that the user wants to operate against the internal drive.

 

[rcobourn]

Just wanted to drop by and say thanks for this detailed write-up. The first time I looked at it I thought, naw, thanks, I'll just pop the drive out and run it on my bench machine. And that's usually fine, but I recently got a laptop from a client that I can't boot Spinrite on because it doesn't offer legacy mode, and the case is falling apart to the point that I think disassembling it might be a one-way street. The client wants this beat up thing back, so I went for it. Spinrite is now crunching away from a virtual machine.

 

[DivnaRiver]

Does anyone have advice on hpsurestart? it seems to allow access to boot from usb, but then it doesn't. It asks if you want to boot from spinrite, then it gives a generic list with . and underneight that .. [to be clear the options are select . (as in dot) or just below .. (as in 2 dots) of which neither load spinrite.

 

[DivnaRiver]

Attempting to scan an external 4TB HDD with spinrite 6.1

Esc upon startup brings up startup menu f10 for bios

in advanced/boot options I deselected UEFI boot order, tried to boot to usb, ( save and exit) upon reboot hitting the enter key, and spinrite started, but I did not choose a drive. I guess that does not happen at this point, because

Let System RAM test run for approximately3:50, then I hit escape and didn’t know what to do from there, so I searched on GRC for answers and got know where, so pushed and held the power button, with the power button, hit enter key repeatedly to show options, options did not show but spinrite started, so I let the “Testing System RAM” run for another 4 minutes, then hit enter to proceed. After it scan for drives it screamed at me and splashed a message I did not catch in red, so I proceeded with a level 3 for the external HDD I had selected, then I realized it did not acknowledge my 4TB external drive, and was only showing me the internal drive options & the thumb drive spinrite was on.

So I forced another shut down by hitting the power button, and it booted to spinrite, and again did not acknowledge my external drive. So I forced a shut down again, and removed spinrite, and external drive, in an attempt to boot normally and acknowledge both dives after a full reboot.

Got a bootDevice Not Found error so, I forced a shutdown again. To change boot option back to UEFI, finally got it to show boot options, rechecked UEFI to see if this would boot the OS.

Seems to have worked, OS system booted.

After some searching some suggested options are , reformatting the external drive to FAT32, I attempted to do that, but my system only gave me the options of NTFS and exFAT, so I choose exFAT, yes I did wipe my drive, and no it did not work, went back to bios deselected UEFI, spinrite started and still could not see my external drive.

 

[Bplayer]

@DivnaRiver It seems that you are booting SR from a USB and this will only give you access to drives accessible via the BIOS. This thread is really about running SR in a VM that may allow various drives not "seen" by the BIOS to be accessed. You will need the steps provided here to create a bootable USB (USB/HDD) that is running Linux or Windows, install a VM, and then run SR from there.

 

[Bplayer]

My original UEFI bootable USB for SR and RS was created a couple of years ago. It was run in offline mode so no Windows updates. With the upcoming Windows UEFI CA 2023 certificate change I decided to install Windows updates to prevent booting issues. Big mistake. There was a long list of updates that took a quite a while to install and required a few reboots. At the end of this adventure the USB would not boot.

It was then time to recreate it. Downloaded the latest Windows 11 ISO, ran Rufus and booted the created WTG USB. Even using the most recent Windows ISO there were a lot of updates also requiring a few reboots. An offline sfc repair was also needed. When it was fully updated and working I installed the VC_redist.x64, Oracle VirtualBox, and then restored the previously created .vmdk and the "VirtualBox VMs" folder from a backup. The VM's all worked smoothly. A new system backup was then taken. This is fastest way to recreate an old build.

Some "learnings" over the years. The WTG can run in unlicensed mode, but Windows customization is prevented. Things like dark mode and some other settings. A Retail Windows key applied only works on the one PC it was installed from, but customization can be performed. When booted on all other PC the activation state shows as "Cannot connect" or needs to be activated, but the customization from the base PC are still in effect.