Is SpinRite 6.1 really that different?

  • Be sure to checkout “Tips & Tricks”
    Dear Guest Visitor → Once you register and log-in please checkout the “Tips & Tricks” page for some very handy tips!

    /Steve.
  • BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware

    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

    GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.

    The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.

    You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

lamwilli

New member
Feb 7, 2024
1
0
I’m a loyal Security Now listener and was happy to have an opportunity to use SpinRite. My son, a habitual Mac user, needed a Windows laptop for a new project. I had an old HP Pavilion machine that had slowed to the point it became unusable. Assuming the drive needed error correcting, I purchased a SpinRite license to check it out.
I downloaded SR6.0, booted the laptop from CDROM and began a level 4 scan. SpinRite estimated it would take about 94 hours to process the entire 800GB drive. Wanting to give my son an answer in less than four days, I found a pre-release image of SR6.1, rebooted the laptop, started the scan, and went to bed.

In the morning, I saw that the scan had completed in less than 4:30 hours!

I rebooted the computer and confirmed that as good as SpinRite 6.1 is, Windows still sucks and there is nothing SpinRite can do about it.

SpinRite 6.1 is amazing. It clearly was a massive effort and deserves a higher version number. While my son isn’t getting a free Windows machine, I know that I have a solid laptop that will make a great Linux Mint workstation for my home lab of the local school.
 
SpinRite 6.1 is amazing. It clearly was a massive effort and deserves a higher version number.
Thanks for your note and feedback, @lamwilli. It really is very much appreciated, especially as we're finally emerging from what was, as you correctly noted, a massive effort.

It truly was a team effort. I'm always more than happy to code — it's what I love more than anything else — and all I really want is to produce the best possible result within whatever constraints are imposed. But it was equally the amazing group of volunteers who, while they were also having some fun, were still patiently testing (over and over endlessly) and pounding on all of this very new code.

The first document I've prepared is "SpinRite v6.1 for SpinRite 6.0 owners", meaning "if you already know SpinRite from 6.0, what has changed in SpinRite 6.1" — and so, yeah, I also know what you mean about it needing a larger version number change. But that will come with the next project... 7.0!!

Until then, thank you so much for your support and feedback!
 
You did not state if SpinRite found errors with the hard drive.
Windows not booting may well be a windows issue of corrupt files etc and not an issue with the hard drive itself.
Did you try windows recovery via disc/usb
 
How about the final candidate being declared as ver6.22
At times during torturous testing of the alpha releases, I've thought version 6.66 might be an appropriate version number. I was, after all, having a helluva time in — more ways than one!;)