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Running 6.1 on a NvME drive in a USB enclosure?

#1

Meppy

Meppy

I am keen to run spinrite on my two NVME drives in my system, I have a USB3 to NVME adaptor, and was wondering what the chances were that this would work with Spinrite 6.1?

I understand it will probably be slow, but the drives are only 512GB and 1TB.

I'm fairly sure my drives will benefit from a Spinrite run through, hoping someone has done what I am suggesting before and has some tips or advice?

Motherboard is an ASUS Z490-E.

Thanks in advance.
Mark


#2

P

PHolder

Meppy said:
USB3 to NVME adaptor
Click to expand...
Boot into FREEDOS and see if the drive is recognized by your BIOS. If it is, SpinRite can talk to it, if it is not, SpinRite will not be able to work on it. If you want a quick way into FREEDOS, download ReadSpeed. You can exit the speed test and return to DOS. But for that matter, if ReadSpeed can't see it, neither will SpinRite.


#3

D

DarkwinX

Considering it's over USB you will probably run into the 137GB clamp which was put in place due to some BIOSs causing trouble after 137GB.

There is a tool that lets you bypass the clamp on "safe" systems but it's still being finalised.


#4

Meppy

Meppy

Hey, thanks for the fast, extremely helpful responses! I wonder if I can get it working on eSata instead... or I might just buy a new drive and re-install Windows to cover my bacon in the meantime.

Thanks!


#5

P

PHolder

One thing to remember about USB and DOS (and thus SpinRite) is that many (or most?) BIOSes only recognize the USB devices present at power on/boot. So if you're doing any testing, make sure you attach the drive before starting testing.


#6

Meppy

Meppy

magnificent_starfish said:
Let's first make sure this is not a XY problem, so what problem do you intend to solve using SpinRite?
Click to expand...
Thanks. Been using Spinrite since the early days when you would get email replies back from Steve :), I just want to eliminate drive problems (potential or existing) from my current system, as like any Windows setup that you use actively and install and change things regularly it has the odd BSOD (mostly driver/software related those I am sure) and need of running sfc to repair stuff.

I basically just want to refresh it out of abundance of caution.

In the past, I have recovered "dead" drives and lost data for clients (when I used to run an IT business) on drives using Spinrite... as well as my own drives. One I even ran Spinrite while the drive was in the freezer :D

That said, I just saw how cheap a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro is. Might just rebuild on that anyway. But I would love to be able to include these drives in preventative maintenance.


#7

D

DarkwinX

magnificent_starfish said:
artificially capped to 128 GB
Click to expand...
Fairly sure this is 137GB :)


#8

Meppy

Meppy

magnificent_starfish said:
You're right I meant 128GiB but I didn't say that.
Click to expand...
I will forever calculate and think in binary when dealing with computer storage and bandwidth...


#9

D

DarkwinX

@fzabkar SR6.1 is still using the BIOS to provide drive access to USB devices so I don't believe any of those direct commands/access methods apply.

During the development process we encountered a bug with some AMI based BIOSs which caused SR to become unstable past 137GB. From memory (and I'm not as technical as some here) memory was being blasted at random by the BIOS which occasionally overwrote memory that SR was using. It was safer to clamp it in the interest of getting to 7.0 faster with native USB drivers.


#10

P

PHolder

DarkwinX said:
memory was being blasted at random
Click to expand...
Remembering that USB was new at one point, and that large drives were also new at one point, somewhere along the way the coders of the USB drivers that got built into some BIOS implementations had a bug. Unfortunately the bug wasn't detected initially because the HDDs available at the time weren't larger than 128GiB. Time passed, things evolved, and new USB implementations came out, but somehow that old bug stuck around and never got patched in the machines that suffered it. Since BIOS isn't really used any more by modern OSes, it's become a latent time bomb for anyone still attempting to use the BIOS with this bug.

Steve chose to limit USB on all BIOSes just to be safe. There is a process where you can test your machine to make sure it's safe and doesn't suffer the old bug, and then you can lift the SpinRite restriction.


#11

D

DarkwinX

fzabkar said:
Many people are reporting problems with Samsung's 970 Evo NVMe SSDs. When they go bad, they become read-only. How would SpinRite deal with this case (when the SSD is behind a USB-NVMe bridge)? Is there a way to test for the read-only bit and abort the process, or does SpinRite just hammer the drive forever?
Click to expand...
No, during the drive discovery process Spinrite tests each drive for access type (AHCI, IDE, BIOS), read and write access and then warns the user if a drive cannot be read/written to that they should not proceed on the drive and marks it red.


#12

Meppy

Meppy

fzabkar said:
Many people are reporting problems with Samsung's 970 Evo NVMe SSDs. When they go bad, they become read-only. How would SpinRite deal with this case (when the SSD is behind a USB-NVMe bridge)? Is there a way to test for the read-only bit and abort the process, or does SpinRite just hammer the drive forever?
Click to expand...
Well, that's disconcerting... guess which model I have that I have concerns about! Yep 970 Evo. I have ordered a new 990 Pro 2TB as they are dirt cheap. Time to do some backups (I got lazy as all my critical data is in the cloud... but rebuilding with all the settings and apps I have won't be a fun experience).


#13

P

PHolder

Meppy said:
970 Evo
Click to expand...
Install Samsung's Magician software, and see if there is a firmware update for your SSD. BTW, some of the 990's had an issue with dropping dead unexpectedly, so you'll wanna update that firmware too, if needed. ( https://www.pcgamer.com/the-damage-...ly-990-pro-ssds-despite-the-new-firmware-fix/ )


#14

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

You may not need to use a USB adapter. Some BIOSs expose NVMe drives directly. SpinRite will still see it as a BIOS drive, but at least it would remove the USB layer.


#15

Meppy

Meppy

PHolder said:
Install Samsung's Magician software, and see if there is a firmware update for your SSD. BTW, some of the 990's had an issue with dropping dead unexpectedly, so you'll wanna update that firmware too, if needed. ( https://www.pcgamer.com/the-damage-...ly-990-pro-ssds-despite-the-new-firmware-fix/ )
Click to expand...
Thanks. I run Magician already, cheers. I think the issue with the 990s dying settled down, fingers crossed and it's about time I got myself some good drive imaging software again.


#16

Meppy

Meppy

ColbyBouma said:
You may not need to use a USB adapter. Some BIOSs expose NVMe drives directly. SpinRite will still see it as a BIOS drive, but at least it would remove the USB layer.
Click to expand...
I will give it a go, but have this feeling that it doesn't work (can't remember why though... so worth a try). BIOS is UEFI, not sure that factors in? Once upon a time I used to be an infrastructure tech and ran my own IT business... amazing how fast I have forgetten things in the 10 or so years since I sold that business :)


#17

K

ktischler

Meppy said:
Thanks. Been using Spinrite since the early days when you would get email replies back from Steve :), I just want to eliminate drive problems (potential or existing) from my current system, as like any Windows setup that you use actively and install and change things regularly it has the odd BSOD (mostly driver/software related those I am sure) and need of running sfc to repair stuff.

I basically just want to refresh it out of abundance of caution.

In the past, I have recovered "dead" drives and lost data for clients (when I used to run an IT business) on drives using Spinrite... as well as my own drives. One I even ran Spinrite while the drive was in the freezer :D

That said, I just saw how cheap a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro is. Might just rebuild on that anyway. But I would love to be able to include these drives in preventative maintenance.
Click to expand...
Haha! Back in my IT days the old freezer trick worked for me on several occasions, allowing me to recover data from crashed hard drives.


#18

S

SeanBZA

That was likely the reason Storegate (the local Seagate reseller and warranty holder) ran the offices at a temperature that would make it a perfect walk in freezer. Took one in that would fail around 35C (which is not considered a hot day here by me), and it would pass Seatools when out in the open plan freezer, but put the box lid on and after 30 seconds it started to become slower as it did retry after retry, till eventually Seatools gave up with a read error. I had bought a new drive, and after a few hours of freezer care was able to Ghost the data over. Now had a spare drive, so cloned the existing, and kept this one in the computer cabinet as a spare, as I could easily recover the data to it. Just swap the SCSI cable ( both drives set identically) and plug power in.


#19

Meppy

Meppy

This reminds me of those 5.25" hard drives that came out in the late 90s and were prone to damage and failure. I think Quantum made them? I remember having them in the workshop, and you had to be careful not to let them be on their side and fall over, as that was enough to damage them.

Back to my original question. With comments, I heard Steve make recently on the podcast, does that change things for me being able to run Spinrite on a USB attached 0.5-1TB NVMe drive?


#20

P

PHolder

Meppy said:
being able to run Spinrite on a USB attached 0.5-1TB NVMe drive?
Click to expand...
USB is only supported by your BIOS. If your BIOS can detect the device, SpinRite should be able to recognize it. It may not potentially recognize that it is a flash device, so may not warn you away from rewriting activities that would decrease the drive endurance (for little or no practical gain.)


#21

Meppy

Meppy

PHolder said:
USB is only supported by your BIOS. If your BIOS can detect the device, SpinRite should be able to recognize it. It may not potentially recognize that it is a flash device, so may not warn you away from rewriting activities that would decrease the drive endurance (for little or no practical gain.)
Click to expand...
I need to go back and look for what is recommended for solid start memory with Spinrite. I thought that the big revelation a while back was that people were getting performance and reliability back from their drives by doing the rewrites (Level 3 I think?), but perhaps it's just the read (Level 1 or 2) that is needed (although then surely other methods would also work so that doesn't sound right to me).


#22

Meppy

Meppy

So I found this: https://forums.grc.com/threads/srs-handling-and-behavior-with-solid-state-drives.1433/post-10776 Where Steve and others appear to say that a Level 3 is beneficial to run on SSD occasionally or when performance appears to be suffering. Do you disagree?


#23

P

PHolder

Meppy said:
Do you disagree?
Click to expand...
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. So while it may TECHNICALLY be the case the drive will be faster... the question remains if you will notice the improvement in every day life (and my guess is you probably will not, but everyone's case is different.) What *I* would do is run a level 1 (full drive read) first. Then see if just reading every part of the drive changed the speed behaviour. (It could also reveal any problems that had gone undetected until that point.) Then if you think it is warranted, try a level 3. This will read and rewrite every sector. (You could try to note if your drive has a lot of data on it in one area, and restrict the activity to only that area using the options available from the [TAB] key just before you start the scanning. There is little to be gained by rewriting areas of the drive that are not actually in use.)


#24

P

PHolder

PHolder said:
(You could try to note if your drive has a lot of data on it in one area, and restrict the activity to only that area using the options available from the [TAB] key just before you start the scanning. There is little to be gained by rewriting areas of the drive that are not actually in use.)
Click to expand...
@Steve:

This is a suggestion for you to add an option in SpinRite (7?) to not attempt a rewrite of "blank sectors". (All zeroes at the minimum, but maybe also sectors that are all of anything, in case some drive returns something other than all zeros for empty sectors.)


#25

Meppy

Meppy

PHolder said:
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. So while it may TECHNICALLY be the case the drive will be faster... the question remains if you will notice the improvement in every day life (and my guess is you probably will not, but everyone's case is different.) What *I* would do is run a level 1 (full drive read) first. Then see if just reading every part of the drive changed the speed behaviour. (It could also reveal any problems that had gone undetected until that point.) Then if you think it is warranted, try a level 3. This will read and rewrite every sector. (You could try to note if your drive has a lot of data on it in one area, and restrict the activity to only that area using the options available from the [TAB] key just before you start the scanning. There is little to be gained by rewriting areas of the drive that are not actually in use.)
Click to expand...
Sounds like the way I would approach it, thanks. The drive is definitely having some performance issues, and I am replacing it with a new 2TB, so figured it was worth giving it a go before I retask it.


#26

D

DanR

Meppy said:
So I found this: https://forums.grc.com/threads/srs-handling-and-behavior-with-solid-state-drives.1433/post-10776 Where Steve and others appear to say that a Level 3 is beneficial to run on SSD occasionally or when performance appears to be suffering. Do you disagree?
Click to expand...
I agree! But with qualifications.

Please see this article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/results-samsung-840-series-250-gb.923/

I know from this experience that Level 3 can speed up a slow (healthy) SSD.

It should be used judiciously though. Excessive/unnecessary use of level 3 will be detrimental to an SSD.

SpinRite 6.1 will do a three point benchmark to check drive read performance. GRC's free ReadSpeed will do a 5 point benchmark speed check.

In the link above, the SSD drive was slow overall. So I ran level 3 on the entire drive with the results shown.

With known benchmark results it may be possible to confine a level 3 scan to just the areas of the SSD drive that need it. :)

Steve has said that a future version of SpinRite 7.x will do a much higher resolution benchmark of an SSD drive for a more surgical application of level 3 scanning.
The future awaits! ;)


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