SpinRite irony humor

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    /Steve.
  • 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.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

jlariviere

Member
Jul 15, 2021
10
2
I am mostly on Linux now. Fortunately I keep a (somewhat current) Win 10 device (ironically happens to be UEFI only), and use that for programs such as SpinRite. I was having issues getting USB devices to boot (but the "Booting SpinRite (Plan B)" tip worked!), as well as issues with burning ISOs to optical disks (probably fixed with the 4th program or so). So I used my registered copy of SpinRite to create a floppy disk for the relatively old ThinkPad running Win 98 with a floppy drive. SpinRite worked :)
The floppy also works in a headless tower (that works with both IDE & SATA) I have running SpinRite on drives I took out of a Drobo that was having problems. Although the many TB of data will take longer, it's getting through it.
Thanks for having the ability to create floppy disks, and looking forward to the future development.
 

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