Problem with drive size

[cologuy]

I am running release candidate 2 on a Lenovo Yoga laptop with a USB external dock. I have two 4TB IronWolf drives that have the same issue when I try to run Spinrite on them. I originally used a old USB dock and thought that might be the problem so I bought a new USB3 dock and the same thing happens. When they are in the dock and I format or run Chkdsk on Windows 11 the drives show their whole 4TB and no bad blocks are found. Both were in my NAS and the NAS reported an unrecoverable back block so I want to run Spinrite on them. Spinrite reports the size of both of the 4TB the drives as 2.2TB (see attached photo).

Is there something else I should try or is this one of those USB issues that will have to wait for Version 7? If the latter can you suggest a cheap device I can buy as a dedicated Spinrite machine? My only desktop where I can mount the drive eliminating the USB is busy 24x7 running a video security system so I can't take it out of service. I remember some discussion on SecurityNow about a cheap computer Steve bought, but I wasn't sure if it was for running SpinRite.

 

[Steve]

Hi @cologuy,

The problem is that USB runs through the BIOS and that particular laptop's BIOS only knows how to handle 32-bits of sectors. That's were that 2.2TB limit is coming from. Newer machines will have newer BIOSes that can handle 48-bits of sectors, which will allow SpinRite to "see" the entire drive through USB. Note, however, that until we get to SpinRite 7, the need to run through the BIOS for any USB-connected drive imposes a significant limitation upon SpinRite's ability to repair and recover drives. It still can (all previous versions of SpinRite have been BIOS only and they have obviously worked) but the best thing you could do would be to find a PC where you could directly attach those drives and run SpinRite on them there. (And I'll be getting to SpinRite 7 ASAP!)

 

[ColbyBouma]

(see attached photo)

Steve, did the image resizer quit working? I've seen several posts like this where an image is mentioned, but not present.

 

[cologuy]

Hi @cologuy,

The problem is that USB runs through the BIOS and that particular laptop's BIOS only knows how to handle 32-bits of sectors. That's were that 2.2TB limit is coming from. Newer machines will have newer BIOSes that can handle 48-bits of sectors, which will allow SpinRite to "see" the entire drive through USB. Note, however, that until we get to SpinRite 7, the need to run through the BIOS for any USB-connected drive imposes a significant limitation upon SpinRite's ability to repair and recover drives. It still can (all previous versions of SpinRite have been BIOS only and they have obviously worked) but the best thing you could do would be to find a PC where you could directly attach those drives and run SpinRite on them there. (And I'll be getting to SpinRite 7 ASAP!)

Thanks I was afraid of that.

 

[CSPea]

. (Snip ...) I remember some discussion on SecurityNow about a cheap computer Steve bought, but I wasn't sure if it was for running SpinRite.

Hi @cologuy,
It was likely the ZimaBoard mini PC that you heard Steve endorse.

I am one of many who are happily running SpinRite on a ZimaBoard - without any of the BIOS quirks that have been seen on older platforms.

As an aside, the ZimaBoard offers either BIOS or UEFI based booting, so it is also 'future proof' to some extent.

(You may have spotted some discussion of ZimaBoards already, here on the Forum.)

Colin

 

[cologuy]

Hi @cologuy,
It was likely the ZimaBoard mini PC that you heard Steve endorse.

I am one of many who are happily running SpinRite on a ZimaBoard - without any of the BIOS quirks that have been seen on older platforms.

As an aside, the ZimaBoard offers either BIOS or UEFI based booting, so it is also 'future proof' to some extent.

(You may have spotted some discussion of ZimaBoards already, here on the Forum.)

Colin

That was it. Thanks!