SpinRite deleted Drive letters on Windows

[rowdy]

Hi Steve,

I just attempted to run the latest of SpinRite.exe from the prerelease page. I inserted a USB drive into the system before clicking SprinRite.exe, asked for the USB drive to be removed. I removed the USB drive and reinserted. Upon reinsertion Windows 10 locked up.
I reset the computer (hit reset button) and I lost my drive letters from the 3 drives/partitions, I have attached to the system. Perhaps I should have waited for the system to respond correctly, but.... impatience ensued.
I'm using as USB extender cable to insert the USB drive, and at times doesn't connect the USB inserted correctly, ie "there is some play in the connector"
Perhaps someting to debug?

 

[Steve]

Howdy @rowdy! I'm unsure what I would debug, or what there is to debug. This USB remove/insert approach has been quite well tested. Windows, since the first appearance of USB drives, has never dealt very well with USB, nor with removable media. But many thousands of people have used this approach without any problem. For example, this is the same technology that ValiDrive uses and we're approaching 200,000 downloads of it without any reports of such trouble. It isn't my intention to pass the buck here. If there was anything I could change I would. But software is always at the mercy of hardware. You say that you're using a USB extender cable that's flaky (my term) and that...

at times doesn't connect the USB inserted correctly, ie "there is some play in the connector"

Since setting up a SpinRite boot drive only needs to be done once, my suggestion would be to not use an unreliable USB connection the one time it matters. Once you get SpinRite to setup that drive, all should be good!