"SpinRite Hangs At Discovering Mass Storage Devices"

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  • 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.

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vvbudh

Member
Oct 1, 2020
21
15
Hello again! I decided to try out Spinrite and this is my first experience with it. I'm not sure if there's a better place to post my "Help!" forum post, but I thought after looking around on google for answers and not finding anything substantial, I'd use SQRL and log in here to ask for some advice on what I should do.

I used wine to get the .img and .iso file, I used etcher to burn it to a flash drive, (the .iso file warned me that it didn't find a bootable filesystem..etc so I used the .img file) Booted into the flash drive and choose option 4, then, SpinRite sits there blinking and "working..."

Has anyone else encountered this? And what information do you need to know to help troubleshoot this?
I'm using an NVMe 2TB SSD, I'm trying to use spinrite on my 4TB storage HDD.
 
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I'm trying to use spinrite on my 4TB storage HDD.
As of right now the ONLY place you can get official support for a paid copy of SpinRite is from Greg, a GRC employee, from the official channel, which should have been included in the information when you made your purchase.

Long story short, SpinRite 6.0 doesn't support drives larger than 2TB.
 
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Really? It doesn't? Well that's unfortunate..

Well, I thought someone here might have some information, I don't like going straight to customer support without at least trying community sources.
 
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Also version 6.0 does not support nvme, I believe 6.1 should handle larger drives at least, but probably not nvme drives. That is all I have to add right now.
 
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As of right now the ONLY place you can get official support for a paid copy of SpinRite is from Greg, a GRC employee, from the official channel, which should have been included in the information when you made your purchase.

Long story short, SpinRite 6.0 doesn't support drives larger than 2TB.


That's not necessarily true. There have been reports of SpinRite working on 3TB+ drives.

And thanks for that @Vela Nanashi, I'm patient enough to wait for a 6.1 version. I still have some other drives that are regular SATA that I'd like to do maintenance on so if anyone else has run into this problem let me know.

When I do find a solution to this I'll be sure to post it here just in case anyone else runs into this issue.
 
That's not necessarily true. There have been reports of SpinRite working on 3TB+ drives.
SR6.0 may appear to work on 3TB drives, however, if you look closely you will find that it is only working on 800GB, i.e. the excess over 2.2TB - the 32 bit limit.
 
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Has anyone else encountered this? And what information do you need to know to help troubleshoot this?
I'm using an NVMe 2TB SSD, I'm trying to use spinrite on my 4TB storage HDD.

As has been noted, SpinRite 6.0 does not do NVMe drives. It does not do AHCI drives either. It is strictly for IDE drives.

SpinRite 6.0 also has a 2.2 TB limit. It can only access the *first* 2.2.TB of a larger drive, provided it is detectable as an IDE drive.

SpinRite 6.1 will handle IDE or AHCI drives with aplomb; it will have *no* size limitation; it will be very much faster than SR 6.0. NVMe support, however, will require a later version of SR, 7.0 or probably 7.1. It's on Steve's roadmap, but he wants to get SR 6.1 out the door first. It's not here yet, but it is coming! :)