Spinrite doesn't see USB Mac drive

[Guidolotito]

I've checked all the SpinRite documentation and forums and I don't see anything that helps. I'm running SR 6.1 on a Windows box (Dell Inspiron). I can boot off a USB-drive and run SpinRite, but SpinRite doesn't see my attached USB drive (I've tried connecting it to various USB ports, same result).

The drive is a Seagate Backup Plus drive that I've used for years with my Mac. The Mac began complaining that the drive was read-only, so I thought I should let SpinRite look at it. I think it's a 2 TB drive. When I run SpinRite, it sees only the 2 WIndows internal drives, not my Seagate.

I saw another post that suggested I check that the BIOS can see the drive, but I don't see how to do that. I went through all the BIOS settings, all USB ports are enabled and I can't find any reason why SpinRite wouldn't see it.

I'm reluctant to open the drive and connect via SATA or whatever, since there are no obvious screws holding it together. Seagate clearly didn't expect or want anyone to open it.

Any suggestions?

 

[DanR]

@Guidolotito

You are doing nothing wrong. The fault is your system BIOS. It is all too typical on Dell machines for the BIOS to only see the boot USB drive. SpinRite can only see the the USB boot drive. It's a shortcoming of the BIOS. All of my Dell systems are that way.

For more detailed info take a look at: https://forums.grc.com/threads/usb-support-in-spinrite-6-1.1479/

Short of opening the drive and connecting to a SATA controller, there is the possibility that running SpinRite in a VM on that machine may work.

The real solution would be SpinRite 7, but that is a long ways away.

 

[Scott]

Running SpinRite in a virtual machine on either windows or Mac will work. See the instructions here, but note that if you only want to test your USB (or any drive that’s not the boot drive), you don’t have to prepare a new boot drive. Just install virtual box and follow the instructions to ensure your “target” drive is offline so SpinRite has exclusive use of it

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-run-spinrite-on-a-uefi-only-machine-part-1-of-5.1613/

 

[PHolder]

It's also worthy of note that different BIOSes treat different USB ports differently. Check by trying any other USB port you have. The potentially annoying bit is the drive may or may not be detected, and you possibly (or quite likely) have to have it inserted at power on... so it could be quite annoying to test out.

 

[Guidolotito]

Thank you for your quick responses. I’m a Mac guy and I’m not very adept with Windows, but I tried creating a VM with Hyper-V and quickly realized that I needed a copy of Windows to install into the VM and I don’t have one. It’s been years since I used VirtualBox and I don’t recall it having the same limitation. I’ll give that a try next.

I love Steve but if I had a vote, I would vote to have him work on SR 7 instead of the DNS Benchmark…

 

[PHolder]

I tried creating a VM with Hyper-V and quickly realized that I needed a copy of Windows to install into the VM

Um no... SpinRite runs under FreeDOS. You may need a temporary access to Windows to run SpinRite.exe to extract the FreeDOS image inside it (the Windows executable runs to help you create a bootable USB to run the FreeDOS image... inception of a sort.) But there are other download options for SpinRite for users, like you, who may need them. (Assuming you have the means to image a USB device on your Mac given an ISO file, for example.) In any case, you should be able to freely make a FreeDOS based image in a VM.

 

[Guidolotito]

Update: setting up a VM is probably beyond my patience and ability. Instead, I found another machine, an ASUS, and it's able to boot off my USB stick and run SpinRite. However, it too doesn't see my attached Mac drive. The Seagate drive is a USB 3.0 drive (blue plug) and it's plugged into a USB 3.0 jack. I have it connected before I boot into FreeDOS. I tried both USB 3.0 jacks, no luck.

I see that when I connect the drive to my Mac, it takes a few minutes before the Mac recognizes it. So I left it sitting, powered on and connected to the Asus, for 30 minutes or so, then tried powering up the machine. SpinRite sees only the Asus internal drive. Any other ideas before I break open the drive enclosure?

 

[PHolder]

it's plugged into a USB 3.0 jack

A lot of BIOSes do not have support for USB 3. Try older ports/protocols.

 

[Tazz]

Does there happen to be a CD/DVD disc drive? If so you could burn the SpinRite iso to add and boot from that.

That’s what I have to do when I want to scan USB drives with my older Dell laptop. It has a lot of USB ports but only one is ‘active’ when the machine first boots, before windows loads.

 

[Guidolotito]

Tried the other ports, no luck. PHolder, what do you mean by older protocols?

It has a CD/DVD disc drive. But I've run SpinRite from the USB stick in different USB ports. Do you think the one 'active' port can float around, and if the one port is used by the USB stick then no other ports are seen?

 

[Guidolotito]

@Tazz: even if I did that, I need a USB port for the keyboard so I don't think booting from a CD would help.

 

[PHolder]

mean by older protocols?

USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 ports... It my experience if you can see a USB device in the BIOS for doing a motherboard firmware update, it's frequently only a USB 2 device... not any of the more advanced/more recent port types... and definitely not a USB-C port type.