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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.)

SpinRite's Development Roadmap

#1

Steve

Steve

Until we have a dedicated SpinRite forum here (as we certainly will), this is the best place to hang:

SpinRite's Development Roadmap

The link above is to a short 2-page PDF summary of the current plan (always subject to change) for SpinRite's future.

Note that “ReadSpeed” is NOT YET READY. I wanted to get things setup here, first. I'll certainly be announcing it (and everything else) here. So be sure to “Watch” this forum (go up a level to Watch all new threads) for announcements. Thanks! (y)


#2

DrDca

DrDca

Can't wait, Steve -- SpinRite is still my goto program for drive repairs!!


#3

Steve

Steve

Can't wait, Steve -- SpinRite is still my goto program for drive repairs!!
What's so cool is that, as we've seen, it turns out that SpinRite is also able to repair SSD's! They suffer from different, but closely related, troubles due to their having so much data crammed into such a small space. Like “spinners”, they make extensive use of on-the-fly error correction.


#4

D

DMargulis

FWIW, I'm in the UEFI first camp even though I also could really use the USB functionality.

But it's really great to hear that your working on updates!


#5

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Thanks for a glimpse of the future. I too won't be able to use SpinRite until I can boot my Surface Book 2 from a USB drive.

As an aside, what good is the ability to turn off UEFI if I can't boot a non-UEFI USB?


#6

T

Tom

Looking forward to the updates. Hard to believe I've been following you now for over 20-years 🤦‍♂️ ...where the hell does the time go! 🤣


#7

Gerbear42

Gerbear42

6.1 -pre-alpha segments, bits and pcs. GIMME. I will hunt and peck in IMSAI VDP60 if I must.


#8

P

PHolder

As an aside, what good is the ability to turn off UEFI if I can't boot a non-UEFI USB?
That is a good question indeed. What precisely does the option to turn it off say? Perhaps what they're really disabling is secure boot or something?


#9

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

That is a good question indeed. What precisely does the option to turn it off say? Perhaps what they're really disabling is secure boot or something?
The Secure Boot option for None says: No keyset is installed and Secure Boot is disabled on the PC. Any boot software will execute on the PC.

I haven't tried turning off TPM.


#10

P

PHolder

Secure Boot is disabled on the PC
This is not disabling UEFI though. This is just disabled Secure Boot, which simply means that the boot loader will make no attempt to verify the image it finds to boot, but will simply proceed to execute it unconditionally. Secure Boot is a useful feature for security minded folks, as it can prevent boot/root kits. It unfortunately gets in the way of booting older software and experimental software that has no signature that the system can verify.


#11

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

This is not disabling UEFI though. This is just disabled Secure Boot, which simply means that the boot loader will make no attempt to verify the image it finds to boot, but will simply proceed to execute it unconditionally. Secure Boot is a useful feature for security minded folks, as it can prevent boot/root kits. It unfortunately gets in the way of booting older software and experimental software that has no signature that the system can verify.
So I'm hosed. :-(


#12

classnet

classnet

Until we have a dedicated SpinRite forum here (as we certainly will), this is the best place to hang:

This user does not have permission to use the HTML BB code.
The link about is to a short 2-page PDF summary of the current plan (always subject to change) for SpinRite's future.
Can't wait for 6.1 et al!


#13

2jcm

2jcm

Looking forward to the updates. Can't remember the version, but I've been with SpinRite since the late 60's or early 70's. Thanks Steve!


#14

Simon Zerafa

Simon Zerafa

Hi Steve,

As I have already commented before it seems to me that UEFI support really needs to come as quickly as it can.

As much as I like the idea of USB support, UEFI support is deperately needed for Spinrite to work seemlessly as possible on modern PC based hardware.

So, reluctently, I'm voting for UEFI before USB, assuming this is a democracy with voting privlages 😉

Kind Regards

Simon


#15

P

Peter

Until we have a dedicated SpinRite forum here (as we certainly will), this is the best place to hang:

This user does not have permission to use the HTML BB code.
The link about is to a short 2-page PDF summary of the current plan (always subject to change) for SpinRite's future.

SpinRite has been a real performer on many storage devices, both magnetic and solid state, and has made for some really happy clients of mine over the years. Such a great program. Started with SpinRite version 3, in the company I worked for, and I still use SpinRite today! What a great tool, thanks Steve.


#16

Dave

Dave

Until we have a dedicated SpinRite forum here (as we certainly will), this is the best place to hang:


The link above is to a short 2-page PDF summary of the current plan (always subject to change) for SpinRite's future.

in SpinRite's Development Roadmap you say:
v7.0 will be a paid upgrade, with no-charge for recent SpinRite v6.x purchasers.
"recent" is a tad nebulous. Presumably, that would be narrowed down at some point.


#17

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Hi Steve,

As I have already commented before it seems to me that UEFI support really needs to come as quickly as it can.

As much as I like the idea of USB support, UEFI support is deperately needed for Spinrite to work seemlessly as possible on modern PC based hardware.

So, reluctently, I'm voting for UEFI before USB, assuming this is a democracy with voting privlages 😉

Kind Regards

Simon
As much as I agree with you, I suspect this is a benevolent dictatorship.


#18

D

dnelson60559

It sure has been a while! I started on version 5 I think and I might have version 6 - not sure anymore. I also loved ChromaZone but was disappointed when it would no longer work on higher resolutions. Looking forward to upgrading.


#19

O

ol5

While I would get for more benefit from doing USB first, I think UEFI makes more sense because Spinrite already works with USB. it is just unbearably slow.


#20

A

aatech

I concur on the priority on making SpinRite work on UEFI. Been doing much research for a friend on how best to migrate to Windows 10 while beefing up security/privacy and reached the conclusion that Secure Boot is necessary, so is Full Disk Encryption (FDE) on the system drive. UEFI bootkit/rootkit seems to be an emerging threat, and unfortunately Secure Boot seems to be the best antidote, where Secure Boot requires UEFI.

This also brings up another question - will SpinRite work on drives / partitions / volumes that have been locked using FDE like Bitlocker, VeraCrypt, BestCrypt etc.? The trifecta of startup security, especially in modern company-owned laptops, seems to be: UEFI + Secure Boot + FDE. So it might be helpful to ensure that SpinRite works in those PCs.

Another issue - It seems that if a disk/volume is protected by FDE with Pre-Boot-Authentication turned on (which is one of the main reasons people install FDE), the startup bootloader of the Disk Imaging software would not work, because that bootloader conflicts with the bootloader of the FDE app. I wonder if the use of SpinRite would affect the effective working of the bootloader of either the Disk Imaging app or the FDE app?


#21

A

aatech

Another issue - It seems that if a disk/volume is protected by FDE with Pre-Boot-Authentication turned on (which is one of the main reasons people install FDE), the startup bootloader of the Disk Imaging software would not work, because that bootloader conflicts with the bootloader of the FDE app. I wonder if the use of SpinRite would affect the effective working of the bootloader of either the Disk Imaging app or the FDE app?

Correct me if I'm wrong, it seems that only 1 bootloader can be installed. Wonder if it's possible to create a "SpinRite meta-bootloader" where SpinRite users can at startup choose between the SpinRite 8.0 bootloader, the Disk Imaging app's bootloader, or the FDE's bootloader? But then it may defeat the purpose of activating FDE's Pre-Boot-Authentication in the first place... just thinking aloud.
Or is it possible to have SpinRite 8.0 bootloader automatically loaded after FDE Pre-Boot-Authentication?
i.e. Power up PC => FDE Pre-Boot-Authentication bootloader => enter FDE pre-boot credentials => SpinRite 8.0 bootloader loads up and provides options to 1) start SpinRite to check/repair disk, or 2) Windows 10 startup bootloader, with options for entering UEFI, boot using external devices or proceed to normal Windows startup


#22

P

PHolder

@aatech If the disk allows reads and replacement of sector contents, then SpinRite can work on it as a raw disk. @Steve will have to reply here to explain why he currently even bothers to comprehend the partition table/file system on any particular disk. I presume it is to allow you to run SpinRite on less than the full disk, which makes sense with past versions of SpinRite that ran more slowly. On modern computers, where it will be driving the disk at its maximum speed, this option probably makes less sense.


#23

P

PHolder

only 1 bootloader can be installed
SpinRite is NOT installed. It boots from media, and runs. It would NEVER be safe to attempt to install SpinRite on a disk that was potentially damaged.


#24

Dave

Dave

SpinRite is NOT installed. It boots from media, and runs. It would NEVER be safe to attempt to install SpinRite on a disk that was potentially damaged.
Although SpiRite is not exclusively used on potentially damaged drives. It is billed as a maintenance and recovery tool.


#25

S

SpacePilot

Looking forward to the updates. Hard to believe I've been following you now for over 20-years 🤦‍♂️ ...where the hell does the time go! 🤣
I found Steve around Security Now episode 7, went back to catch up from episode 1.


#26

S

SpacePilot

Are there any Beta versions of 6.1 we can get a hold of? The time and electrons necessary to scan my multi-terrabyte drives has precluded SpinRite maintenance on them.


#27

Steve

Steve

Are there any Beta versions of 6.1 we can get a hold of? The time and electrons necessary to scan my multi-terrabyte drives has precluded SpinRite maintenance on them.
Nothing yet. We first need to finish the ReadSpeed benchmark (that work is being done over in GRC's less webby grc.spinrite.dev NNTP newsgroup. Once ReadSpeed is as ready as we can make it, it'll be released here for wider testing, which will finalize its technology. Then that tech will be moved into SpinRite and we'll have the first v6.1 beta. No idea when... but it has all of my attention. (y)


#28

S

StevePearson

What's so cool is that, as we've seen, it turns out that SpinRite is also able to repair SSD's! They suffer from different, but closely related, troubles due to their having so much data crammed into such a small space. Like “spinners”, they make extensive use of on-the-fly error correction.
Hey Steve, I noticed your plan to implement Beyond Recall for a secure wipe of systems through the use of cryptography. Will the wipe technology address concerns with remenant data on SSD's that are hidden due to the flash transition layer retiring an old storage space, or just be able to see what a traditional Operating System can see? Thanks.


#29

Adam-F

Adam-F

I'm looking forward to using the up and coming versions of SpinRite on my large TeraByte drives. I also have a few questions regarding the development.

What is ReadSpeed?

So SpinRite 8.0 will be bootable on any Windows, Mac, Linux or other x86/x64 hardware platforms, but what about when Apple moves to ARM based hardware, will that be supported too?

Also will USB versions 3.0, 3.1 & 4.0 be supported in the future? and finally, will the bootable ISO image be able to be used on a Multi-boot USB drive enviroment?



#31

P

PHolder

when Apple moves to ARM based hardware
I asked this question on the GRC newsgroups, and the answer is basically "Steve is unlikely to code in ARM machine language, but only time will tell."


#32

P

PHolder

Beyond Recall for a secure wipe of systems
data on SSD's that are hidden due to the flash transition
If the drive has already "given up" on sectors that had data that failed, there is nothing any code external to the SSD is going to be able to do to clear whatever remains. If the contents are that important (top secret++) you should NEVER assume that a software solution is sufficient. Wipe it securely with software, then incinerate it or similar... it's the only way to be sure.

Most drive manufacturers with any reputation have a separate software utility for their higher end (pro level or enterprise level) drives that can use electricity to zap all the blocks in the SSD to an empty state.


#33

linuxkidd

linuxkidd

Hi Steve,
I wanted to put a vote in for expediting UEFI support. I know you have this on your roadmap based on updates you've shared on Security Now... but I wanted to share that I personally, have not had a machine that normally boots in CSM ( BIOS ) mode for many years ( maybe 10 years? ). I realize I started on the edge booting to UEFI mode that far back, but new computers have been sold in UEFI mode for the past few years too. I also understand that SpinRite is typically "needed" more on older devices / older systems... and using a Virtual environment for scanning is a workaround.. but when it comes to ease of use, nothing really beats native UEFI support for on-device, native scanning.

Further, there's only one computer in my collection ( out of my current set of 10 ) that has SATA connected devices... and that's my 192TB server. Everything else is running NVMe exclusively. Has there been any testing on NVMe devices? I don't recall hearing you mention it on the podcast.

I do want to thank you for all your work on the podcast, health research, your myriad of free tools, SQRL, SpinRite, et al. I look forward to the podcast each and every week to stay abreast of current events and benefit from your analysis and insights. Please do keep up the amazing work!

All the best,
Michael J. Kidd
aka linuxkidd


#34

Adam-F

Adam-F


This was a very interesting article. Thanks for posting it in here.


#35

A

AlanD

Further, there's only one computer in my collection ( out of my current set of 10 ) that has SATA connected devices... and that's my 192TB server. Everything else is running NVMe exclusively. Has there been any testing on NVMe devices? I don't recall hearing you mention it on the podcast.

All the testing to date has been to get SpinRite working through AHCI rather than IDE interfaces. Although some of the utilities have detected NVMe drives, 6.1 will not support them directly. It is likely that it will support M.2 drives connected as SATA, but not if they are PCI-e


#36

Raymond Day

Raymond Day

Found this forum from link Steve did on Twitter. Know about it but did not know the URL.

Any way looking forward to the new SpinRite too. I got some big hard drives waiting for it. 3 TB and ones. The old one can't do this size drive. What will be the limit size of the hard drives for this new SpinRite. I seen they have 14 TB drives now and I think will have 20TB or maybe they all ready do.

-Raymond Day


#37

linuxkidd

linuxkidd

All the testing to date has been to get SpinRite working through AHCI rather than IDE interfaces. Although some of the utilities have detected NVMe drives, 6.1 will not support them directly. It is likely that it will support M.2 drives connected as SATA, but not if they are PCI-e
Right, I was specifically talking about PCIe interfaced NVMe devices. M.2 SATA should be... SATA, so that I would expect to work with the AHCI interface Steve is working on (practically done with).

Just wanted to put my $0.02 in for sooner than later support of these newer, now practically ubiquitous technologies.


#38

A

AlanD

What will be the limit size of the hard drives for this new SpinRite. I seen they have 14 TB drives now and I think will have 20TB or maybe they all ready do.

-Raymond Day

I don't think it has been specified, but from what I have seen, it will probably be 256TB as 48bit BIOS addressing cannot handle more than that.


#39

Derek

Derek

Looking forward to the new updates for Spinrite Steve. I’m excited!!


#40

Derek

Derek

If you need beta testers for Spinrite Steve let me know I’m interested. My current version 6.0 will not work on my large capacity HDs.


#41

D

DarkwinX

If you need beta testers for Spinrite Steve let me know I’m interested. My current version 6.0 will not work on my large capacity HDs.

The ReadSpeed benchmark will practically be beta testing for the driver technology that will power Spinrite 6.1. If you haven't already, check out the about page (posted a few posts up).


#42

A

AlanD

Most of the testing is going on in the GRC Newsgroups, specifically grc.spinrite.dev.

If you don't know about News Readers, have a look at https://www.grc.com/discussions.htm


#43

PeterBursky

PeterBursky

Until we have a dedicated SpinRite forum here (as we certainly will), this is the best place to hang:

This user does not have permission to use the HTML BB code.
The link above is to a short 2-page PDF summary of the current plan (always subject to change) for SpinRite's future.

Note that “ReadSpeed” is NOT YET READY. I wanted to get things setup here, first. I'll certainly be announcing it (and everything else) here. So be sure to “Watch” this forum (go up a level to Watch all new threads) for announcements. Thanks! (y)

Hi Steve

SpinRite 6.1 can't be here soon enough! I really wish i could run SR on my large, multi-terabyte disks, without them being reported with incorrect size in the UI.
Looking forward for when you release the final/finished product!


#44

P

Pajh

Beyond Recall is sorely needed. Greatly looking forward to this in addition to SpinRite advancements.


#45

P

PHolder

Beyond Recall is sorely needed
I don't agree. I mean we don't have a Gibsonian solution to disk wiping, but there are utilities from the manufacturer, as well as DBAN. DBAN should be sufficient for spinning media and the manufacturer utilities should handle SSDs. And you always have hammers and fire for the paranoid.


#46

P

Pajh

I trust Gibson a lot more than the manufacturers for secure deletion. Secure deletion is a sensitive matter that requires the utility be from a highly trusted creator, trust in that that entity will do the right thing but also in technical know how. Manufacturers have gotten it wrong on both regards too many times in the past for me to have full trust in them. Had problems with DBAN in the past.


#47

P

PHolder

@Pajh secure deletion of a SSD is usually done by electrically zapping all the flash cells (at once or in sequence.) The way flash works, you "clear" it by setting all the cells to 1 and then write individual cells with 0 to set your data. This is a normal part of the activity, so it's not anything special.

Additional, people who actually care about security, buy drives with firmware that encrypts all data at rest. Erasing them (using the manufacturer's utility) is as simple as zeroing the area where the key info is stored. This is virtually instantaneous. This is what Apple does, for example.

You're free to be paranoid enough to think you need something special that only Steve can provide, but Steve is not going to provide you with a sledge hammer or matches, which is what the truly paranoid should use.


#48

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

I trust Gibson a lot more than the manufacturers for secure deletion. Secure deletion is a sensitive matter that requires the utility be from a highly trusted creator, trust in that that entity will do the right thing but also in technical know how. Manufacturers have gotten it wrong on both regards too many times in the past for me to have full trust in them. Had problems with DBAN in the past.
What problems did you have with DBAN?


#49

Steve

Steve

Beyond Recall is sorely needed. Greatly looking forward to this in addition to SpinRite advancements.
Thanks, Pajh. I won't bother defending my plans to anyone here, since no one knows what I have in mind. Suffice to say that I doubt you'll be disappointed by what I do have in mind, and that it will be as unique as all of the other things I have created. That's all of the fun!! (y)


#50

MarkyMac

MarkyMac

Can we also get access to the Beta versions of SpinRite and the associated doodads here? I've just gotten lost trying to get access elsewhere, and I used to use NewsGroups a lot.
I'm still gutted from the 6+ years wasted on SQRL. 6.X owner from years back.
Upset Apple Inc. user that was very excited back in 2013 or whenever that was.


#51

Steve

Steve

Can we also get access to the Beta versions of SpinRite and the associated doodads here? I've just gotten lost trying to get access elsewhere, and I used to use NewsGroups a lot.
In a word, Yes. Once we have a release that's stable enough for wider pre-release, it will be announced and made available for general release here. Users will need to have either their current SpinRite serial number — available in the SpinRite UI, or their original purchase transaction number from their receipt, if they have it. Either of those will identify the user as a currently-valid SpinRite v6 owner, which will enable them to download their own upgrade at any time.


#52

V

vincenator

Thanks for a glimpse of the future. I too won't be able to use SpinRite until I can boot my Surface Book 2 from a USB drive.

As an aside, what good is the ability to turn off UEFI if I can't boot a non-UEFI USB?
Me too. (Surface, not the magic) :)


#53

C

crusader27529

Absolute speed to run spinrite on large drives isn't always important, as many home users just use it to fix/refresh their cache of drives, and use externally mounted drives on a test setup. The time for verification of a drive thus doesn't impact much, as it's not like that the drive being recovered affects a production system.

As such, I (and likely others) would prefer to be able to use an external drive tray or docking station connected through a USB port. Personally, I don't have any current desktop systems, just laptops of various capabilities, so using such a device for spinrite to verify external drives absolutely would require an external connection, say a USB port.

Currently I have a file server based on a SuperMicro 2U server running FreeNAS, and since I use a RAID card in IT more for my drive connections, I have extra SATA/SAS ports that are available. The docking ststion I have has an eSATA port, and I have a SATA to eSATA cable that should allow me to test in the external dock, but it has not been tested yet. The server isn't in use 24X7, so I plan on testing when it's not being used as a server, but being able to use a laptop through USB would be ideal. I suppose that I could mount drives to be tested in a hot swap drive tray after removing the other 8 drives in the system, but I'd like to keep things as simple as possible.

BTW, I've not tested you current code on the SuperMicro server.....I watch the newsgroup but can't post anything there.


#54

Steve

Steve

I very much want to get to USB-attached devices. And I WILL look at how big a deal that will be. The question is only whether USB or UEFI should come first. My inclination is to do the quicker of the two first so that we won't need to wait as long for the next feature bump. But first we need to get SRv6.1 out with high-speed support for directly connected IDE/ATA/SATA drives. And, of course, USB =will= still work... they'll just be pokey.


#55

Adam-F

Adam-F

I am also up for beta testing Spinrite.


#56

Raymond Day

Raymond Day

I think it is super that you program in Machine Language. I learned Z80 on the old TRS-80 before basic. The 6502 on the commodore 64 but never on the 686 I guess you call it. But doing Machine Language learned how to do electronics too because it's like about down to that doing Machine Language. Every Language converts down to Machine Language any way.

Thank you Steve.

-Raymond Day


#57

P

PHolder

I self-taught myself to program in BASIC on the Vic-20, which was pretty limiting experience. It wasn't until I got a C-64 that I also got an Assembler and thus taught myself to program 6502 assembly. Eventually I got paid as a professional programmer for a small C-64 project I coded in 6502. After that I had enough money that I moved on to Amiga and then the PC, and I've never been back to 6502 assembly. I messed around writing a terminal program in 8086 assembly (based on someone else's code that I learned from) but high level languages were just too alluring to me because I could be so much more productive. As a programmer I am pretty much the opposite of @Steve... I prefer high level constructs like classes and object oriententedness.


#58

PulseTsar

PulseTsar

I very much want to get to USB-attached devices. And I WILL look at how big a deal that will be. The question is only whether USB or UEFI should come first. My inclination is to do the quicker of the two first so that we won't need to wait as long for the next feature bump. But first we need to get SRv6.1 out with high-speed support for directly connected IDE/ATA/SATA drives. And, of course, USB =will= still work... they'll just be pokey.

Not sure about which is faster, but in terms of need I would vote for UEFI. Without it, the list of systems I own on which I can still use SpinRite shrinks day by day.


#59

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

I think it is super that you program in Machine Language. I learned Z80 on the old TRS-80 before basic. The 6502 on the commodore 64 but never on the 686 I guess you call it. But doing Machine Language learned how to do electronics too because it's like about down to that doing Machine Language. Every Language converts down to Machine Language any way.
Now you're bringing back memories. I started assembly language coding on an IBM System 360 (mainframe). For personal computing I had a Sinclair ZX80 with cassette tape backup and a thermal printer. After that I got a Coleco*Vision Adam (because of the letter-quality printer) with CP/M. I programmed it in assembly, Logo and Basic. The best part is it used high-speed random access tape for storage. Finally, I bought an IBM 286 clone, loaded Windows 3.0 and never looked back.


#60

Steve

Steve

Not sure about which is faster, but in terms of need I would vote for UEFI. Without it, the list of systems I own on which I can still use SpinRite shrinks day by day.
Yes... and that IS the path I expect to follow, for exactly that reason.


#61

DrBunsen

DrBunsen

What problems did you have with DBAN?
Every time that I've run SpinRite after running DBAN on a drive, SpinRite has shown in the "Raw Data Snapshot" window that the drive was well and truly zeroed out for as long as I ever bothered to watch the blankness go by. Yet another side benefit to running SpinRite!


#62

P

pinter

For my particular use case being able to just run spinrite on a USB drive would be huge. If I can run it in a VM on my mac that would be awesome. I don't have much computer hardware around the house anymore aside form a couple laptops and a NAS these days. Main thing I want to do is scan my NAS drives periodically. And something that works on drives bigger than 2TB :)
Thank you Steve for getting back to this.


#63

C

Christian Alexandrov

not surprised Dban is proven tool.
your idea of verification however is very good one


#64

vajiggle

vajiggle

Been patiently waiting for the update. I have amassed a nice collection for 6.1 when its ready.
Excited about the new operating speeds!

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#65

Tazz

Tazz

Been patiently waiting for the update. I have amassed a nice collection for 6.1 when its ready.
Excited about the new operating speeds!

When I get a stack as big as one of those the wife yells at me saying that I'm taking up too much room. :(


#66

DavidJ

DavidJ

GPT initialized disks would be a boon as well


#67

Cebess

Cebess

I know what you mean about the definition of recent. I bought SpinRite when it was mentioned on Security Now that there would be a new version. That's been years ago now, but a good program is worth waiting for so... we wait. Many of my current computers will not run 6.0 reliably so I can't wait to try out the new version and provide feedback. I'm now retired so hopefully I'll have time to really give it a workout.


#68

R

RIL

Does the current version (SpinRite 6.0) work on 1TB HDD? I have two HDDs ( Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB-руб 2,241) in RAID (mirror) which has been spinning for over four (4) years continuously.

I just tested the HDDs on "UserbenchMark" (pictured) and I wonder if these disks are supported:

1602478751587.png


#69

P

PHolder

Does the current version (SpinRite 6.0) work on 1TB HDD?
If the drive is recognized by the BIOS (not UEFI) then it should work (slowly).


#70

R

RIL

If the drive is recognized by the BIOS (not UEFI) then it should work (slowly).
OK, thank you for a quick and clear answer!

// RIL


#71

Doofus53

Doofus53

Thanks for all your efforts and productivity, Steve. I've used SpinRite for a number of years and I am eagerly awaiting the bright and shiny new version.


#72

Steve

Steve

Does the current version (SpinRite 6.0) work on 1TB HDD?
Yes. The current limitation is imposed by the 32-bit sector count supported by traditional partition tables.
32-bits = 4,294,967,296 sectors. At 512 bytes per sector, that's 2,199,023,255,552 bytes, or 2.2 Terabytes.


#73

C

ChrisQuinn

I now wait with great anticipation. I lost a 16TB drive last week. It started with a few errors while writing a file. I immediately copied all the data I did not yet have backed up and stopped writing to the drive. A few of the files were constant errors so after trial and error I got all but about 200GB of data copied. Next I thought I could try to run a surface test to see if the SMART technology would help at least mark the sectors bad and maybe, if I am lucky, allow me to read what is left. Alas, that killed it for now. My last hope is that SpinRite will do its magic. To that end I have just finished building a new Machine that will be dedicated to run SpinRite. So Steve, Please help. I am truly in need now rather than just wanting to pre-emptively test my drives. For now the drive will sit on a shelf, but I would really like to claim my replacement under warranty.


#74

Steve

Steve

@ChrisQuinn I would dearly love to be able to help you... but there's just no realistic way that I'm going to have anything like v6.1 in short order. I still have a lot of careful work to do. What did that drive cost? A troubled 16TB drive would be useful for testing. So I would probably be willing to purchase it from you at any time, now or in the future. Thus you could remove the issue of warranty replacement from your thinking.


#75

C

ChrisQuinn

I paid $372 for it back in August. New ones are $354 today. In order to get the warranty I first need to go through Amazon as this was a part of a larger order. and now after SN786 I even start to wonder if it is a Fake. The serial number does appear to be valid, but that is no guarantee as you well know. I find it curious that this happened at right about the 12TB size, you don't have to guess what I am thinking. All of that said, I'm not comfortable selling it. But let me think about it and maybe I can send it to you. I just have to get comfortable with that in thinking what data is on the drive.


#76

Steve

Steve

I completely understand, Chris. I think that you should pursue the warranty if you can. I don't want you to lose money on this. If you don't want to sell it, at least you can have any commercial software (SpinRite 7, Beyond Recall, etc.) at no charge... Because there's no way I could ever take your money. But, also... If you're not comfortable about what might be on the drive, I totally understand that, too. (y)


#77

J

jamesmberry

I'm definitely interested in seeing the forward movement of SpinRite with the many fans of the product. I was never able to get SR6 to run on my 2012 Asus laptop (has a newer WD Blue 1 TB SATA) and I'd love to keep that laptop running. Your staff gave me guidance but it didn't allow me to run SR6 on that drive (probably UEFI issue). My new rig (HP Omen) has an upgraded Samsung 970 (M.2 NVME) 1 TB (started as a 512GB + 32GB optane) that's smoking fast and gives me no issues (also is backed up regularly). Thanks for your good work and I'm about to start my pursuing the Security+ and your explanation of topics should help me out a lot.


#78

Steve

Steve

Glad to have you here, @jamesmberry. If you're curious, you can check today that SRv6.1 will run on any machine tomorrow by using the InitDisk utility with the /freedos command-line option to prepare a bootable USB “thumb-drive.” If you can get any machine to boot to DOS, then SpinRite will run on that machine. If it's not possible to boot and run FreeDOS on a machine — due to UEFI-only and no support for the traditional BIOS environment — then that machine will need SRv7.


#79

Dave

Dave

Glad to have you here, @jamesmberry. If you're curious, you can check today that SRv6.1 will run on any machine tomorrow by using the InitDisk utility with the /freedos command-line option to prepare a bootable USB “thumb-drive.” If you can get any machine to boot to DOS, then SpinRite will run on that machine. If it's not possible to boot and run FreeDOS on a machine — due to UEFI-only and no support for the traditional BIOS environment — then that machine will need SRv7.
@Steve, this response, minus the opening salutation, would be good to pin to the top of this thread.


#80

C

ChrisQuinn

I completely understand, Chris. I think that you should pursue the warranty if you can. I don't want you to lose money on this. If you don't want to sell it, at least you can have any commercial software (SpinRite 7, Beyond Recall, etc.) at no charge... Because there's no way I could ever take your money. But, also... If you're not comfortable about what might be on the drive, I totally understand that, too. (y)
@Steve After thinking about it and discussing it with a colleague I am feeling more comfortable sending the drive to you than I am with the data in tact sending it back to Seagate. The data is not sensitive, it is only a few archives of my original 4K and BluRay disks. (yes, I did purchase these and I have and do retain them in my library). I can't do a good wipe yet since Beyond Recall is not available, nor can I recover without a copy of 6.1 or later. If I return it under warranty then I feel my disks will end up on the dark web. I don't want that either.

That leaves me with either destroying the drive in other ways (in the past I take them apart as the platters make real nice mirrors for sitting under nick knacks), keeping it until I can recover it myself, or sending/selling it to someone that can use it to create the best recovery tool available, and about the only person I would trust to destroy the data ate their earliest convenience. Yes, that is you.

I would rather not discuss the details on a public chat, how can we discuss privately the next steps?


#81

Steve

Steve

@ChrisQuinn : I've opened a private “Conversation” with you in the forums. You'll see a little flag on the “envelope” at the top/right of your page.

And, for what it's worth, having been in the data recovery software business for 35 years, there have been many times that I've handled other owner's drives containing sensitive data. I take some pride in never having had the slightest bit of interest in their contents. I've literally never looked.

But please, again, allow me to offer to purchase the drive from you. There's no reason why you should be out the cost of the drive when SpinRite's development will likely be able to obtain enduring value from it.


#82

P

PHolder

I would rather not discuss the details on a public chat, how can we discuss privately the next steps?
Click on the little envelope up on the top right by your Avatar, Select the text "Start a new coversation..." and put Steve in for the user ID. From there it'll be similar to making a normal forum post, but it will be private between the two of you.

EDIT: Okay that was weird, Steve's message above showed up out of nowhere, must have been onto a new page. Although Steve started a conversation with you, I'll leave this message to explain how you could have been the one to start it if you had needed to.


#83

W

williwaldo

Is making SMART work again on the roadmap? That was one of the first hit and miss things with V6 as newer computers arrived. Sometime we could disable AHCI an it would work. Or switch to the controller to compatibility in BIOS. I think the SMART data is helpful and informative to see all the ecc corrected, reloacated sectors, seek errors, etc. while the scan is happening.


#84

Steve

Steve

Is making SMART work again on the roadmap?
Yes, definitely. When SpinRite needed to fall back to accessing drives through the BIOS it was unable to obtain SMART data. v6.1's full bypass of the BIOS for IDE/ATA/SATA (non-AHCI and AHCI) will always be able to show SMART. The only places it won't will be NVMe and USB-connected. But those will also come not long after. (y)


#85

L

LikesCookies

Currently I have my BIOS set to "Legacy" boot. Will that be affected by the new SpinRite? Will I need to change that setting? I couldn't get the surrent SpinRite to boot without that setting.


#86

Dave

Dave

Currently I have my BIOS set to "Legacy" boot. Will that be affected by the new SpinRite? Will I need to change that setting? I couldn't get the current SpinRite to boot without that setting.
No. The concern being discussed here is over newer systems that might not have that option. As you noted, without that option, you could not run the current version of SpinRite. But you WOULD be able to run the new version, with or without having - or setting - that option. The new version should work either way.


#87

Aldo

Aldo

The new version should work either way.
It depends on what you mean by "new version". As I understand it, SR version 6.1 will still rely on legacy-BIOS/non-UEFI boot for launching FreeDOS. The future SR version 7.0 however is projected to probably not need a separate DOS, and may therefore run under/after a non-legacy BIOS/UEFI boot. My comment may be unreliable because of faulty wetware memory.


#88

Dave

Dave

It depends on what you mean by "new version". As I understand it, SR version 6.1 will still rely on legacy-BIOS/non-UEFI boot for launching FreeDOS. The future SR version 7.0 however is projected to probably not need a separate DOS, and may therefore run under/after a non-legacy BIOS/UEFI boot. My comment may be unreliable because of faulty wetware memory.
Excellent point. And I do believe you are correct.


#89

D

DanR

It depends on what you mean by "new version". As I understand it, SR version 6.1 will still rely on legacy-BIOS/non-UEFI boot for launching FreeDOS. The future SR version 7.0 however is projected to probably not need a separate DOS, and may therefore run under/after a non-legacy BIOS/UEFI boot. My comment may be unreliable because of faulty wetware memory.

Yes, SR 6.1 will require a BIOS to boot up the DOS environment it needs to run in. However, SR 6.1 will *not* care whether the BIOS is in AHCI, ATA, IDE, or Legacy mode. Whichever mode is currently is selected in the BIOS, SR 6.1 will simply work and do its thing, with the drives it detects in the selected mode.

SR 7.0 will add UEFI, as well as USB, compatibility to SR 6.1's BIOS compatibility.


#90

B

Beebolini

As a new-to-this-drive stuff, but experienced user otherwise. I was not aware of the wonderful world of UEFI vs BIOS, secure boot, and UEFI-CSM mode. I guess I come from the good old days when a BIOS was a BIOS. :)

As a result, just trying to create and book a disk image or ISO to run Spinrite was, well, fun on my machine. I finally figured out that I have to disable secure boot, reboot, then go back into (BIOS?) and only THEN can I pick any other USB drive or CD/DVD to boot from. Can't make it simple and just allow you to disable secure boot and set up alternate drives to boot from all in one session, can we? Noooooooo... There really aren't clear instructions for this stuff, so it was a lot of Googling and frustration before I figured it out.

Just wanted to say that now that I've mostly figured things out, I'm really loving Spinrite, as expected. I agree with the comments way earlier in this thread about making Spinrite work with UEFI. I'm guessing there are systems out there now that don't have CSM mode as an option? (if I'm understanding that properly...)

Thanks Steve and all of your staff. Happy to support you!


#91

M

Mervyn Haynes

As a new-to-this-drive stuff, but experienced user otherwise. I was not aware of the wonderful world of UEFI vs BIOS, secure boot, and UEFI-CSM mode. I guess I come from the good old days when a BIOS was a BIOS. :)

As a result, just trying to create and book a disk image or ISO to run Spinrite was, well, fun on my machine. I finally figured out that I have to disable secure boot, reboot, then go back into (BIOS?) and only THEN can I pick any other USB drive or CD/DVD to boot from. Can't make it simple and just allow you to disable secure boot and set up alternate drives to boot from all in one session, can we? Noooooooo... There really aren't clear instructions for this stuff, so it was a lot of Googling and frustration before I figured it out.

Just wanted to say that now that I've mostly figured things out, I'm really loving Spinrite, as expected. I agree with the comments way earlier in this thread about making Spinrite work with UEFI. I'm guessing there are systems out there now that don't have CSM mode as an option? (if I'm understanding that properly...)

Thanks Steve and all of your staff. Happy to support you!
See my UEFI posting way back.


#92

Guy

Guy

See my UEFI posting way back.
Should include a link to it.. I think you mean here?: https://forums.grc.com/threads/uefi-booting.33/


#93

M

Mervyn Haynes

Should include a link to it.. I think you mean here?: https://forums.grc.com/threads/uefi-booting.33/
Sorry, yes I should have. Could not work out how to include it at short notice!


#94

M

mdSeuss

I have "the most dangerous" 1TB drive I've ever met. I'll explain why:

- it was removed from a production system because of some RAID errors I was not part of diagnosing
- SMART is happy all around, no unusual errors
- Format NTFS or EXT4 and you can read/write files to your heart's content
- Write a pass of zeroes over it (Linux dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX) ... no problem and doesn't change SMART status

I use ZFS Raid 1 pairs for archiving data (ZFS doesn't trust any disk drive and adds some checksums to the data it reads and writes to disk)

I can put this drive into a ZFS Raid 1 configuration and start pushing data to it. At some random point, ZFS says "too many errors"

SMART still says all is good ????

I will save this drive for SpinRite testing (or just ship it to Steve for his collection of odd drives). I too have piles of old drives to mess with :)


#95

L

Liquidfusion

@Steve - Hi!! If you need a beta tester - Sign me up!! Creative tech / musician who loves Spinrite!! Very glad you're improving Spinrite 6.0. There is nothing like Spinrite for removing data - checking disk sectors - them magnetically putting data back down. Brilliantly amazing. Built several PCs. Actually got data off a dying drive (clicking) by freezing it in a plastic bag for hours, then gently wacking the drive horizontally against a table - quickly adding sata wiring harness (PC was open / no case) - starting my PC. In 15 Min, I recovered 100% data from this drive, then it suddenly died for good. I got Spinrite 6 soon after - this is years ago. Never had a drive problem since with 2 TB Drives. Today, I'm using two 10 TB Hitachi drives inside and external (backup - Oyen Mobius Pro - USB 3.0 transfer speeds) - in a PC I built (Win10 64bit + I7CPU 4290K + 16GB DDR3 Ram. OS is on a WD 500GB SSD. Have SSDs in/outside as well. Really like to run Spinrite on these drives!!!!


#96

A

AlanD

Hi!! If you need a beta tester - Sign me up!!

Most of the work is going on over in the Newsgroups (news.grc.com) at the moment. SR6.0 would only work on IDE drives, but Steve has been developing and testing his AHCI driver. This is now pretty much finished and being integrated with the old IDE driver code.

If you haven't used newsgroups before, see https://www.grc.com/discussions.htm. The one you want to join is grc.spinrite.dev


#97

uteck

uteck

listening to this weeks Security Now, sounds like next week will be a big announcement for 6.1.


#98

D

DanR

Currently I have my BIOS set to "Legacy" boot. Will that be affected by the new SpinRite? Will I need to change that setting? I couldn't get the current SpinRite to boot without that setting.
Nope! The new SpinRite, 6.1, will *not* care! There will be no need to change that setting for SpinRite 6.1.

SpinRite 6.1 would allow you to change that setting back to AHCI, for example, and leave it there. SR 6.1 will work just fine either way.


#99

D

DanR

listening to this weeks Security Now, sounds like next week will be a big announcement for 6.1.
I have not caught the podcast yet. I'm thinking Steve hopes to announce the release of ReadSpeed 1.0 next week.

While RS 1.0 is an important step forward towards SR 6.1, SR 6.1 remains a ways off yet.


#100

Cozmo

Cozmo

Ooooooooh a new sub-section of the forums dedicated to ReadSpeed... Locked for now, but shows you things should be coming out soon (tm)


#101

D

DanR

Steve plans to tackle UEFI boot capability immediately after SpinRite 6.1 is released. Steve's immediate goal is to get SR 6.1 out the door to address most of the major issues with SR 6.0.

Then he will begin working on adding UEFI boot, full USB compatibility, and NVMe support, for subsequent releases of ReadSpeed and Spin Rite.


#102

L

LikesCookies

SR 7.0 will add UEFI, as well as USB, compatibility to SR 6.1's BIOS compatibility.

Right now, SR 6.0 handles my USB drives without issue. Is SR 6.1 not going to work with USB drives and I'll have to get SR 7.0 in order to get that ability again?


#103

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Right now, SR 6.0 handles my USB drives without issue. Is SR 6.1 not going to work with USB drives and I'll have to get SR 7.0 in order to get that ability again?
Nope, SpinRite should continue to work just fine on drives it currently works on. SR 7 will increase its USB compatibility. I can't wait since all my devices ar MS Surfaces and require UEFI support.


#104

D

DanR

Right now, SR 6.0 handles my USB drives without issue. Is SR 6.1 not going to work with USB drives and I'll have to get SR 7.0 in order to get that ability again?
Barry is correct. SR 6.1 will work with USB HDD's pretty much just as SR 6.0 does now. The drive must be connected to the PC before power-up so the Bios - and SR 6.1 - can detect it. SR 6.1 however will be faster than SR 6.0.

I perceive full USB functionality will include things like: USB keyboards will not lose responsiveness when SR's screen saver kicks in. Major USB issues on Macs will be resolved. USB HDD's can be detected and benchmarked as AHCI and IDE drives are now. And SR will perform even better with USB HDD's.


#105

P

PHolder

The drive must be connected to the PC before power-up so the Bios
I don't know that every BIOS will work this way, and in particular I don't know if UEFI will work this way at all (even with CSM mode active), but of course SpinRite needs version 7 for UEFI anyway.


#106

D

DanR

I don't that every BIOS will work this way, and in particular I don't know if UEFI will work this way at all (even with CSM mode active), but of course SpinRite needs version 7 for UEFI anyway.
UEFI is a whole new paradigm - NO Bios. I suspect Steve does not how that is going to work out yet. It is currently planned for SR 7.

Meanwhile: SR 6.1 is an enhanced version of 6.0, which eliminates 6.0's constraint to work thru the Bios. Thus 6.1 will have 6.0's very limited USB capability - which means 6.1 can only see what the Bios sees. And the Bios will only see a USB HDD if it is detected on power-up. That is, no "hot swapping" of USB HDD's.

When Steve gets full USB compatibility via his USB drivers (SR 7.x), then maybe hot swapping is a possibility? Time will tell.


#107

P

PHolder

the Bios will only see a USB HDD if it is detected on power-up
That was my point. I don't think all BIOSes (in whatever form they take, including the BIOS Compatibility Support Module of UEFI) will support recognizing USB devices at boot. Additionally, this may work with USB 2.0 (or heaven forbid 1.1) but may NOT work with USB 3.x.


#108

D

DanR

Yup. A lot of unknowns to be sure. I was looking at this from the standpoint of 6.0 (not the best viewpoint). But you have a point. There may be newer nuances for which current rules don't quite apply. Steve may have some interesting challenges ahead of him.

Edit 12/18: I have a LT with USB 3.0 ports. An InitDisk-ed USB stick boots fine from those 3.0 ports. But there are systems where USB is not recognized. IIRC one or two have been mentioned in the spinrite.dev news group.


#109

M

moo

Hello. Valid 6.0 license owner of SpinRite. Would someone be willing to share with me how to obtain the beta SpinRite software 6.1 with UEFI support? I'm in a major pinch right now, and don't see an easy way to obtain it through the newsgroups (I don't really understand that system). Any help would be greatly appreciated.


#110

P

PHolder

Would someone be willing to share with me how to obtain the beta SpinRite software 6.1 with UEFI support
I would: the secret access code is: wait! ;)

Unfortunately it doesn't exist yet. What does exist is a beta version of a disk speed test, and that should be released in the next week or so. Check back here in the new year, or stay tuned to Security Now.

You can never predict Steve and what will come up with issues as he develops and tests, but I wouldn't count on seeing a SR6.1 release any time before, say, June 2021 at the earliest.

Also, 6.1 will not have UEFI support. That will be 7.0, and that won't get released for at least a couple years if things go as they have been.


#111

M

Mike in Cambridge

I'm speaking here as a purchaser of SpinRrite ver 6.0. I purchased my copy to support the Security Now podcast and on a limited number of occasions have used SpinRrite to refresh older personal drives (80-160GB in size), that had not actually failed; but were showing increased temperature in operation together with gradual decreases in performance.

As others have said, Steve makes no explicit commitment to update SpinRite at purchase nor should he have to. Unfortunately technology has moved on in leaps and bounds.

I was a coder in my younger days and I found the assembly code modules I used in my coding to be effectively faultless.
I did not write in Assembler though. Coding is hard.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Spinrite in my experience and I assume that to get to 6.0 from earlier versions required a lot of specialist work. I feel now that we need a broad timeline from Steve as to when we as customers can expect 6.1 (if Practicable) and in the longer term Ver 7.0 and later.


#112

M

Mervyn Haynes

I feel now that we need a broad timeline from Steve as to when we as customers can expect 6.1 (if Practicable) and in the longer term Ver 7.0 and later.
Have you read the beginning of this thread? It explains what you have asked.


#113

P

PHolder

To paraphrase @Steve: It takes as long as it takes--quality matters more than speed. More specifically, read his own words: https://www.grc.com/miscfiles/GRC-Development-Roadmap.pdf


#114

Steve

Steve

Anyone who has participated in the development work on SpinRite's new drivers over in the GRC Newsgroups should come away with a clear sense for several things:

I'm working toward the next SpinRite about as hard and diligently as is humanly possible -- seven days a week, never taking a day off, about 12 hours per day. Anyone who doesn't know me, or who hasn't been participating there, might take this as a complaint. But they would be wrong. I'm doing this by choice and because I truly love the work. On the first date with the incredibly tolerant woman with whom I'm now living, I said: “I only need one thing from you: I need you to let me work. If you will let me work, I'll be glad to have you around. But no relationship that prevents me from working will succeed."

A number of people who have been observing the process have kindly commented that they now understand, having witnessed it for themselves firsthand, why the results of my efforts always stand apart from what this industry typically produces -- with its constant patch cycles and bug fixes. In today's heterogeneous computing world it's surprisingly difficult to produce complex low-level hardware-interacting code that works universally for everyone. But so far, albeit at great expense of time and effort, we are achieving that. And despite the tremendous investment of time and effort, I'm giving it away -- at no charge -- even to people who purchased SpinRite v6.0 sixteen years ago in 2004. People respond to that, saying “I'll gladly pay for it if I can have it now!” But I don't have it now to sell, even for a gazillion dollars.

Mike asks for a broad timeline for SpinRite v6.1. Elsewhere, Paul (@PHolder) mused to someone else that they shouldn't expect to see SpinRite v6.1 before the summer of 2021. That seems quite far off, so I hope he's proven wrong. And I'll be doing everything I can, every single day between now and v6.1's release to get it done. But Paul is also correct in observing that I do not work to a schedule because I cannot work to a schedule. Externally imposed “schedules” ARE the reason why so much of today's software is crap. Users want it both ways: They want high quality software, and they want it now. The high quality software requirement I can meet. But “now” = “as soon as it's done” and I truly have no idea when that will be. But it will be as soon as possible. :)


#115

P

PHolder

Elsewhere, Paul (@PHolder) mused to someone else that they shouldn't expect to see SpinRite v6.1 before the summer of 2021. That seems quite far off, so I hope he's proven wrong.
I know you know @Steve that I meant that in no disrespect. I know how hard medium quality software is to make, so I also know that high quality software always takes longer that you plan for. I wanted to give you plenty of margin for the unexpected, and not to say it was in any way happening too slowly.


#116

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Thanks for the update @Steve (although its nothing I didn't already surmise). I understand the urge to program and the fun of solving problems (I've had that urge since I was old enough to ask my father for a sample 1040 instruction sheet because it was an algorithm for paying your taxes). I retired on January 1, 2020 and I still program most days for the sheer joy of it.


#117

Steve

Steve

@Barry Wallis : It wasn't long into that first date, when Lorrie asked: “So what are your plans for retirement?” It wasn't until after I answered honestly that I learned it was a bit of a trick question... because, in her view, it had only one correct answer. Without hesitation I replied “Oh... I'm never going to retire. I'm having way too much fun working, and what would I do?” It turned out that was the one right answer. :) (y)


#118

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

@Steve: I love that story. Unfortunately, my career path careened from programming into technology leadership that required my other skills. And while I didn't love my job once I stopped programming, I really enjoyed many of the people I worked with. Plus, it allowed me to continue working at the same company for over 20 years and retire without any monetary concerns. My wife understood before we got married that she would always have to share me with a computer. We have been married for more than 42 years and I still program every day.


#119

Steve

Steve

@Barry Wallis : Your story is certainly as good as mine! (y)


#120

T

Terry

But it will be as soon as possible. :)
I'm still waiting on Project X. ;)


#121

M

moo

I would: the secret access code is: wait! ;)

Unfortunately it doesn't exist yet. What does exist is a beta version of a disk speed test, and that should be released in the next week or so. Check back here in the new year, or stay tuned to Security Now.

You can never predict Steve and what will come up with issues as he develops and tests, but I wouldn't count on seeing a SR6.1 release any time before, say, June 2021 at the earliest.

Also, 6.1 will not have UEFI support. That will be 7.0, and that won't get released for at least a couple years if things go as they have been.
Thank you for your response, I appreciate it.


#122

S

Scott

Roadmap Suggestion: Tackle SAS drives next after 6.1

(posting on forums.grc.com as well as in newsgroups)

Summary:​

@Steve ,my suggestion is to add SpinRite capabilities for SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives before moving on to other capabilities like USB or UEFI.

Rationale:​

SAS drives are high performance drives used in enterprise-class storage, often in RAID arrays. I expect there would be a large market from enterprises for SpinRite in this space, as it builds upon SpinRite's known strengths in conventional magnetic recording (CMR) mechanical drives, and would (I think) take much less time to build than other proposed features. Additionally, the SCSI drive work needed for this could be reused as part of the USB feature addition.

Why address SAS prior to other planned features:​

This work is in the traditional “sweet spot” of SpinRite, addressing a still-burgeoning market of mechanical drives. It would take less time than other planned work, would work in a FreeDOS environment, and add tremendous value for enterprises. Steve, I could see you having a separate “Enterprise” version of SpinRite (and charging more) for these capabilities if you wanted.

Quick Technical Background:​

Drives:​

SAS drives are high performance drives, with models on the market as CMR mechanical drives as well as SSD. Mechanical drives have rotational speeds of 7.2K RPM, 10K RPM, or 15K RPM, and when connected via the current SAS-3 spec, achieve throughput up to 12 Gbps; the mechanical drives are clearly higher performance than AHCI / SATA drives, and are unsurprisingly much more expensive.

Host-Based Adapters (HBA):​

The HBA allows communications between the PCI bus and the drives. Unlike parallel SCSI, drives are not daisy-chained, but cables can be split and expanders can be attached to cables. Most HBAs allow for 4, 8, 16, or 24 direct-attached drives, and with the use of expanders, up to 1,024 drives can be attached to one HBA. HBAs allow for both internal and external connections to SAS drives. SAS allows for cable lengths of 10 meters vs 1 meter for SATA / 2 meters for eSATA.

HBAs come in two flavors:
  • HBA with hardware RAID built-in, or
  • HBA without hardware RAID (HBA in "IT" or "Initiator Target" mode).
In order to fully address the drive's capabilities, the driver would be written to work with an HBA in IT mode.

Most SAS HBA models have a BIOS and can be accessed under FreeDOS as well as UEFI. Unlike AHCI for native SATA, there is no industry standard for driver protocol to HBAs; different manufacturers use their own driver model, but I believe Steve could write a driver for just one vendor's family of cards; see next section for why.

Why only write a driver for one vendor's HBA cards?​

SAS drives run in RAID arrays and are hot-swappable. Any suspect drive would be pulled from its RAID array and then connected to a standalone "SpinRite" PC to run repairs. That PC could have the specified vendor's card in it. After repair, the drive would be reinserted back into the RAID array.

LSI Logic (now Broadcom) has the lion's share of the market; in addition to their own branded cards, they make most of the OEM cards (Dell, HP, IBM), and they use an industry standard protocol called MPI (Message Passing Interface) for communications, so it would make sense to me to target this vendor's family of cards.

Work:​

I believe there are 3 chunks of work:
  1. Write driver for the SAS Host Based Adapter. In addition to the vendor technical documentation, BSD-licensed driver source code in C is freely available and can be copied or studied for royalty-free use in closed-source commercial products like SpinRite.
  2. Add SATA drive capabilities. SAS HBAs work with both SATA and SAS drives, so this should be a port of the SATA driver work you’ve already done, using the SATA Tunneling Protocol (STP).
  3. Add SAS drive capabilities. This would translate your drive logic into SCSI commands, and be new work, using the Serial SCSI Protocol (SSP).

Code Reuse:​

  • As noted, the SATA drivers would hopefully be a port of the existing SATA work
  • The SAS drive capabilities, using SCSI, are new. However, the USB has two protocols for communication to USB drives:
    • USB Mass Storage Bulk-Only Transport (older), and
    • USB Attached SCSI (introduced with USB 3 but usable with USB 2 devices)
The UAS work, when it comes to pass, would be able to leverage the SCSI work done for SAS drives.

Reasons not to do this:​

This would not benefit home users, as very few home setups (even those with home NAS devices) use SAS drives. But I would think plenty of medium size and larger enterprises would be eager to have SpinRite capabilities for their on-premises storage systems.


Anyway, my 2 cents (or 200 cents, thanks for bearing with me!). Note I am not recommending this work for my own benefit, I'm semi-retired, but in thinking of what Spinrite 6.x and higher would be addressing, this seemed like a pretty big hole.

References:​

Great background thread on history of Broadcom (LSI Logic) family of HBAs is here, along with MPI commands:
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...d-raid-controller-technical-discussion.24119/

BSD-Licensed source code (freely usable or copyable in closed source programs):
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/tree/master/sys/dev/mps/mpi

Wikipedia SAS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI

Wikipedia USB Attached SCSI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Attached_SCSI

Broadcom main product page:
https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters

SAS cable selection info (they are directional, so cable types matter!!)

https://www.servethehome.com/sas-sa...8088-8470-8482-8484-single-device-connectors/


#123

S

Scott

Roadmap Suggestion: Tackle SAS drives next after 6.1

(....... CUT .....)
And based on conversations in the newsgroups, this probably doesn't make sense as a priority -- the R in RAID stands for Redundant, so RAID arrays will not need the data recovery features of SpinRite; though resurrection of a wonky drive is nice and saves some money, it may not be the most urgent need for SR


#124

A

Argonot

@Steve, will the new SpinRite be able to work on multiple hard drives simultaneously? I think that if SpinRite is able to work on several hard drives simultaneously, it would make it more attractive to companies with a lot of hard drives. I'm thinking for example of Backblaze that at the end of 2020 had 150,757 hard drives on their data centers. For a company like that I think it would be useful to run SpinRite on the drives that they plan to deploy, so that they minimize the failures of the deployed hard drives, and run it on the hard drives that fail, because if they choose to replace a drive "it can take up to a couple of weeks to rebuild a drive, especially large drives on busy systems".


#125

Steve

Steve

@Argonot : Not yet, but Yes! eventually. Simultaneous operation on any/all of a system's drives is absolutely on the roadmap. But none of the current SpinRite code — nor its user-interface — was designed to support simultaneous operation on multiple drives. So... your idea is absolutely right, but I cannot get there until I'm able to spend more time getting SpinRite ready for it.


#126

Steve

Steve

SpinRite's Development Roadmap — 4th Release

The link above is to the short 2-page PDF summary of the current, just updated, plan for SpinRite.​

What happened, is that over the past three or four days, while I've been working on SpinRite v6.1, I've also been working to lay out a clear plan for the future past SR v6.1. After extensive research into many possibilities, there was one clear winner for the way to go forward: Dropping 16-bit DOS and switching to a 32-bit real-time operating system which can boot from either BIOS or UEFI.

SpinRite's next home for the rest of its long life will be the On Time RTOS-32 operating system. It is clearly the right solution for a great many reasons. So, SpinRite's Roadmap has been updated to explain the implications of this decision.


#127

jdoverton

jdoverton

This user does not have permission to use the HTML BB code.
The link above is to the short 2-page PDF summary of the current, just updated, plan for SpinRite.​

What happened, is that over the past three or four days, while I've been working on SpinRite v6.1, I've also been working to lay out a clear plan for the future past SR v6.1. After extensive research into many possibilities, there was one clear winner for the way to go forward: Dropping 16-bit DOS and switching to a 32-bit real-time operating system which can boot from either BIOS or UEFI.

SpinRite's next home for the rest of its long life will be the On Time RTOS-32 operating system. It is clearly the right solution for a great many reasons. So, SpinRite's Roadmap has been updated to explain the implications of this decision.
Steve,

I can't thank you enough for your contributions to many aspects of my understanding of security and drive maintenance. I just had to upgrade my PC (the last one was about 10 years old, still serviceable now that I reformatted the drives and reinstalled Windows - so my wife uses it). However, the new PC is UEFI only. I cannot get readspeed (or anything else) to boot that doesn't support it. I was so looking forward to readspeed and I will try to resurrect a retired machine to use it, but having waited so long for 6.1 that supports ACHI natively, I hold little hope of seeing 7.0 soon. Can't wait for 6.1 and its speed enhancements if nothing else. I just have to hope my new PC's disk holds out until 7.0.

Put my vote in for advancing UEFI support.


#128

S

Steve Sexton

Put my vote in for advancing UEFI support. I haven't been able to boot from the USB for some reason.


#129

BSmithline

BSmithline

My vote is for UEFI support. Makes it KISS.


#130

O

orthopodvt

I run a mixture of PC's and Mac's, so having UEFI support would be nirvana. I just keep my fingers crossed that none of my Mac drive crap out....


#131

I

Ianc

I'd vote for UEFI support too. Having just bought a (Win10) laptop for my photo editing, it only supports UEFI booting and I feel very vulnerable not being able to run spinrite on it.


#132

K

Kmcdonald

Having USB 3.0 to SATA docking station and Multifunction HDD Docking station and well as an external IDE drive enclosure and several external drives, I am interested in how well they will work with SR 6.1 and 7.0 since 6.0 doesn't detect any drives connected to USB ports. My current computers are old enough to support BIOS boot and both boot-up Readspeed fine from USB. (Note: I moved Spinrite 6.0 to the same USB stick that I installed Readspeed on and it runs fine from there for scanning the internal drives).


#133

Steve

Steve

@Kmcdonald : I'm afraid that v6.1 probably won't perform any differently than v6.0. But my plan is to get v6.1 out as quickly as possibly, then I've designed a solution to get moved over to v7 as quickly as possible. Since v7 won't offer anything other than UEFI support — being primarily a port of v6.1 from 16-bit to 32-bit code and OS — people might choose to wait until v7.1 to upgrade from v6.1, since it won't be until v7.1 that I'll be able to get USB working natively. /// That's the plan at the moment.


#134



Mainframe

Just out of curiosity, will v6.1 still fit on a 1.44 MB floppy?


#135

Steve

Steve

Just out of curiosity, will v6.1 still fit on a 1.44 MB floppy?
Yes. Easily. The 16-bit DOS SpinRite executable, and the DOS OS itself, will both easily fit into a single diskette with lots of room to spare. The SpinRite executable will be somewhat larger, but probably not much.

For SpinRite v7, I don't yet have any idea how large the 32-bit OS and 32-bit SpinRite will be.


#136

L

LikesCookies

> people might choose to wait until v7.1 to upgrade from v6.1, since it won't be until v7.1 that I'll be able to get USB working natively.

I'm not being mean or insulting, but that should be able 2030, then, judging on how long it took to get from the start of 6.1 development until now. I'm not sure I'll still be alive. Oh, well, anything worthwhile is worth the wait.


#137

D

DanR

I'm not being mean or insulting, but that should be able 2030
Pessimist! ;)

The real work on building SR 6.1 started about two months ago. All that came before was laying the groundwork, although unquestionably SpinRite related. And then there has been some notable non-recurring effort to decide upon and then create the development environment for subsequent SR builds.

SR 7.0 UEFI boot ought to be a fairly quick proposition, i.e. SR 6.1 with UEFI boot.

SR 7.1 USB will take longer due to the driver development required and the many variations of USB to be considered.

SR 7.2 NVMe may be a shorter effort with few variations?

Steve should be able to complete all of this by 2029! Easy! :D

Seriously, I would speculate on SR 6.1 and 7.0 being released this year. 7.1 maybe by the end of this year, but very possibly still a work in progress.

It's all just speculation. There are just too many unknowns and potential Gotchas to do otherwise.

Just my $0.02


#138

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

@DanR Maybe @LikesCookies is factoring in the years @Steve took off to work on SQRL. ;-)


#139

P

PUAlumni

Being a fan of this software since V5 (I know, not THAT long ago), it's somewhat crippling not being able to use SR or RS, since newer hardware is UEFI only.


#140

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Being a fan of this software since V5 (I know, not THAT long ago), it's somewhat crippling not being able to use SR or RS, since newer hardware is UEFI only.
I understand. My Surface Books 1 and 3 are UEFI only and NVMe. That means I need to wait for 7.2. At least my external USB drive will only need to wait for 7.1.


#141

L

LikesCookies

I'm also one of those people who has a very tolerant spouse. We married each other over 46 years ago. I, too, started my career programming (my first project was to write a Fortran-like compiler that generated a proprietary assembly language for an airborne computer) but later transitioned to administration of computer systems. I had plenty of late night and all night sessions while programming - started off with Hollerith cards on the IBM System 360. Computers are still my "other wife," my real one says. I, too, am retired and well-enough off financially.


#142

A

Agent92

I see there has been some discussions earlier here about that there at some point will be a Spinrite 6.1 beta, any update on when that might be?


#143

P

PHolder

Spinrite 6.1 beta, any update on when that might be?
I have no special insight into that, but based on the lack of recent status reports, I wouldn't expect anything of consequence before July 2021. Also, the first news of it will probably be on his SpinRite Dev newsgroup, at least initially. Steve will probably eventually do a new post here when he has something newsworthy to share, but it might not be until after the group on the newsgroup works out any initial bugs.


#144

M

Mervyn Haynes

I see there has been some discussions earlier here about that there at some point will be a Spinrite 6.1 beta
I think the betas will be available for people who already have purchased V6 and provide their proof of purchase. It has gone a bit quite at the moment, Steve has just got married, and is a little pre occupied :) He says he went straight back to work, but I don't believe him!!!!!!!!!


#145

D

DanR

I see there has been some discussions earlier here about that there at some point will be a SpinRite 6.1 beta, any update on when that might be?
No timing can be speculated. I have long thought that by July 01, 2021 is doable for a SpinRite 6.1 release. Although it is getting closer, there is still time - 2.5 months yet - for that to happen.

Per posts Steve made earlier today in the development NG, there may be one more public demo to show the new GUI screens, and validate some things, before the beta - for registered SpinRite owners only - is available.


#146

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

think the betas will be available for people who already have purchased V6 and provide their proof of purchase.
Your proof of purchase is your private transaction code found in your original e-mail receipt (I still have mine from eight years ago).


#147

rfrazier

rfrazier

Your proof of purchase is your private transaction code found in your original e-mail receipt (I still have mine from eight years ago).
You can also reference your SpinRite unique serial number which shows up when the program is running.

@Steve is notorious for not quoting development dates, a philosophy I approve of. However, he did say in one of the latest podcasts that work is progressing and that's he's having to rewrite massive amounts of code to adapt to 64 bit sector addressing.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. :cool: Ron


#148

M

Mervyn Haynes

Your proof of purchase is your private transaction code found in your original e-mail receipt (I still have mine from eight years ago).
Just beat you by one year. Found mine from 2012 ;-)


#149

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Just beat you by one year. Found mine from 2012 ;-)
Thank God for GMail. :)


#150

D

DanR

Your proof of purchase is your private transaction code found in your original e-mail receipt (I still have mine from eight years ago).
Just beat you by one year. Found mine from 2012 ;-)
And I beat you both! Mine is from Feb 2011.


#151

P

PHolder

Amateurs :p

Itemized Software Purchase Receipt
from Gibson Research Corporation
2007-02-16


#152

M

Mervyn Haynes

Right, a competition eh..

Well I bought Ritespin -4.01223 before I was born. Back then it worked on stone platters, and worked at a speed of 4 dinosaur bits per year. A tablet (as it was called then) took 1 century to run, and always crashed every other century. I don't know why I bought really, it cost me over 1 amebae, and Steve will not even consider giving me an upgrade! Very poor customer service. I am going back to hammer & chisel to save all my data. At least that is written in stone.


#153

A

AlanD

I can't find my receipt at the moment, but I was certainly posting in the NewsGroups back in 2003. From the executable, it looks like my copy is dated June 2004.


#154

Tazz

Tazz

2009-11-26 here.
Wow, I would have said four or five years ago before I looked it up.


#155

D

DanR

I can't find my receipt at the moment, but I was certainly posting in the NewsGroups back in 2003. From the executable, it looks like my copy is dated June 2004.
Get in touch with Greg. He can help you out.


#156

rfrazier

rfrazier

I can't find my receipt at the moment, but I was certainly posting in the NewsGroups back in 2003. From the executable, it looks like my copy is dated June 2004.
Run SpinRite. Some of the screens should have your serial number on it. Go here:
and put in the serial number. It will look up your transaction record.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. :cool: Ron


#157

Steve

Steve

Hey Gang,

I just saw this thread and thought I'd check in. It's true that Lorrie and I worked on our wedding night, last Wednesday. Having already been together for three and a half years, not much really changed for us. There was no "waiting to be married, then..." sort of nonsense. She's probably the sanest woman I've ever known. So it's very comfortable. Mostly, being married makes her extremely happy and content, since she really wanted to be married. So that's a win-win.

It has been a bit rocky getting back into SpinRite because it's code that I truly haven't been deep into since 2004, and the shift between a 16-bit segmented programming model and the flat 32-bit world I've been working with in Windows for the past 17 years, is significant. As everyone knows, I try to be a measure twice (or three times) and cut once sort of developer, and the dumb mistakes I was making initially were worrisome. I think I'm past that, but I'm still needing to watch myself.

Another concern related to 16-bit segmentation is this snippet from SpinRite's Symbol MAP file:
Start    Stop     Length   Name     Class
00000H   0E687H   0E688H   CODESEG  CODE
Those lines show the current size of SpinRite's single 16-bit segment for its code. The current size is 0xE688 which is 59,016. The fixed and immutable maximum size of any 16-bit segment is 65,536. So SpinRite's code segment currently has 6520 bytes of space available. If I'm unable to fit the rest of the required new code into that remaining 6520 bytes of space, it will be necessary for me to switch SpinRite to a multi-code segment model. This is possible, but I REALLY hope it won't be necessary since it involves a lot of reworking. But I've been cognizant of this all along, so I've been working from the start to avoid that. The good news is that this available space has been holding relatively constant for quite a while even while I've been adding new code and capabilities, because I've been re-writing old code to be tighter when I encounter it and I've been writing the new code as economically as possible.

Another more optimistic way of viewing the situation is that the available 6520 bytes of available space is nearly 10% of the total 65,536 bytes. So in all of the existing SpinRite I've only consumed a little over 90% of the total available space. Given that I have already imported much of the new ATA and AHCI driver code from the earlier ReadSpeed work, I think we're going to be okay.

My plan, as I recently wrote in the grc.spinrite.dev newsgroup in reply to someone posting “is this group still alive?” is to finish all of the integration of the new support — through the drive enumeration, display, selection and characteristics browsing — bringing the user right up to the point where SpinRite is about to begin “going.” That will allow everything that should be working to be verified before we move into the actual “it's alive!!” stage.


#158

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Thanks for the comprehensive update.


#159

P

PanamaVet

Spinrite purchase date 3/23/2006.

My daughter was in college and having trouble with her laptop. After copying important files Windows setup could not format the drive.

Spinrite fixed the drive and it never failed again.

I look forward to the new version at whatever pace works for Steve.


#160

G

gordosity

2003-08-14


#161

D

DanR

2003-08-14
Would that be SpinRite 5? (It counts!)


#162

P

PHolder

Mind you, in 1990 or so, I used what I believe was version 1.0 of SpinRite, on my BBS HD. I didn't own the license at the time unfortunately. I do recall it ran from 5.25" floppy disk.


#163

rfrazier

rfrazier

5.25" floppy disk
@PHolder That's old school. I remember those. This is slightly OT but, regarding nostalgia, I worked at Delta Air Lines in 1988 as a Flight Simulator Technician. At the time they had, I think, a few 8" floppy disks floating around. Also, They had removable multi platter disk packs that were 80 MB or 300 MB and 15" across, reel to reel tape, and a DC8 simulator that was programmed with punched cards. How things have changed. Not trying to hijack this thread. So, if we want to beat those topics to death, we could start a new thread I guess.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. :cool: Ron


#164

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

I recently put together a magic routine where I go through a short history of removable media. I end with punch cards and ask my volunteers to write something on the back that would fit into 1/3 of a tweet (80 bytes). I also mention how my wife noticed over the years that as storage became smaller the amount the storage could hold became larger.


#165

G

gordosity

Would that be SpinRite 5? (It counts!)
Itemized Software Purchase Receipt
from Gibson Research Corporation
2003‐08‐14 at 16:40 UTC

Product(s) purchased:
Qty 1 of SpinRite 5.0 (now 6.0!) (First time purchaser)


#166

J

JimWilliamson

/threadjack...

With talk of 5.25" drives I decided to have some fun with old hardware last night. I think this is my oldest SpinRite... v1.2b.

I tried hard to get true screen grabs... DOS PowerTools "Capture" for ANSI graphics grabs onto 5.25" DSDD / 360K then copied onto 1.44 floppy then to USB attached 1.44 drive into DOSbox on a current computer but they weren't perfect so I just grabbed a camera to photo a few screens.

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#167

danlock

danlock

I remember having to c:/>park before shutting off the power.

Color-emulating monochrome displays? Oh, that would have been nice... maybe. As it was, I was stuck with the very high-resolution (for the time) Hercules monochrome display (green on black for me).

A TSR CGA emulator allowed me to run Escape from Monkey Island/etc. demos on that HUGE 20MB HDD.

For gaming, I much preferred my colorful (and with nice audio) Atari 8bit computer... and left the Leading Edge (brand) IBM PC-compatible for my mom to do her work with. 7.14 MHz turbo mode! woohoo!

I remember wanting SpinRite very badly, mostly for 5 1/4" floppies. As a kid, I couldn't afford it. I think I salivated quite a bit, though.


#168

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

green on black for me
I was always an amber on black guy.


#169

P

PHolder

amber on black guy
I seem to recall IBM having an Amber/White combo I saw at work. I recall it being a largish tube display that was split into four smaller displays... with four different mainframe apps in each display. (Maybe/probably the display wasn't doing anything special, it was whatever was driving it between the mainframe and the display.)


#170

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

/threadjack...

With talk of 5.25" drives I decided to have some fun with old hardware last night. I think this is my oldest SpinRite... v1.2b.

I tried hard to get true screen grabs... DOS PowerTools "Capture" for ANSI graphics grabs onto 5.25" DSDD / 360K then copied onto 1.44 floppy then to USB attached 1.44 drive into DOSbox on a current computer but they weren't perfect so I just grabbed a camera to photo a few screens.

threadjack/
Screen Thief could be worth a try: https://www.grc.com/dev/SpinRite/DOS_Screen_Thief_TSR_v2.04f.zip


#171

R

Roger Rabbit

Newby
Itemized Software Purchase Receipt
from Gibson Research Corporation
2006-05-05 at 18:24 UTC
Of course due to changes in hardware, etc., it has been useless for my needs for at least 3+ years, so what if I need to wait 2 or 3 more years for an useable version.

3 years ago, this stopped it cold, do not have anything it will run on though I have needed it multiple times. Trash the drive, buy another, and where is that windows.iso?

Well the image won't upload, but it's a "MBR followed by EFI" error... and we're done. Multiple drives, multiple computers. This was a 1GB drive.


#172

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

I haven't been able to run SpinRite since I purchased my Surface Book 1 (I'm on Surface Book 3 currently). I can't complain though. It was worth the price as it got me out of several jams when I could run it. I will purchase 7.x when it can run under UEFI and my USB 3 connected external HDD.


#173

R

Roger Rabbit

I haven't been able to run SpinRite since I purchased my Surface Book 1 (I'm on Surface Book 3 currently). I can't complain though. It was worth the price as it got me out of several jams when I could run it. I will purchase 7.x when it can run under UEFI and my USB 3 connected external HDD.
I used it through work from very early versions, on 5¼" floppy days, when an 80MB drive was a monster. My personal copy has recovered multiple drives over the years.

But for years now totally useless. The first time it failed for me was on a rather mundane laptop with a 500 GB drive. Nothing exotic, no big drives, just a somewhat run-of-the-mill Dell laptop. I contacted GRC support, and they just confirmed it won't work, got wait for the next version... well that was over 3 years ago.

I get that Steve was off on his SQRL thing, but lots of people were left out here to dry with a tool we had learned to depend on that is totally useless on newer hardware.

And while SQRL is complete, and apparently a fantastic tool, it is totally useless since I haven't seen a site that supports it, except grc.com.


#174

D

DrummaMan

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Gibson!! Wishing you both all the very best in all things good! (Including SciFi!)
God bless you Steve for your good works and continued inroads into the new SpinRite.
All the best,
MG


#175

Steve

Steve

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Gibson!! Wishing you both all the very best in all things good! (Including SciFi!)
God bless you Steve for your good works and continued inroads into the new SpinRite.
All the best,
MG
Thanks. At my urging, Lorrie kept her last name. She's a professional who's known by her colleagues and clients by her last name. And I have zero ego associated with her taking my name. In fact, at this stage in our lives, it would feel sort of weird.


#176

FlyingPenguin

FlyingPenguin

Thanks. At my urging, Lorrie kept her last name. She's a professional who's known by her colleagues and clients by her last name. And I have zero ego associated with her taking my name. In fact, at this stage in our lives, it would feel sort of weird.
CONGRATS! Same here when we got married 25 years ago. My wife was also a business professional at the time and her family was well known in those business circles. I've never had a problem with it. I've long since gotten over people sometimes calling me by her last name. Seems arcane in this day in age for a woman to have to change her name, not to mention a real pain as far as all the paperwork.


#177

M

MacNala

It was unusual when I got married, almost 54 years ago, but as my wife had also many business contacts and staff the change never took place they all called her Miss {unmarriedname}.


#178

Dave

Dave

My favorite marriage anecdote: As my aunt tells it, when she and my uncle got married, for the first 3 months, she was his legal guardian. 🙃


#179

danlock

danlock

Was he 17 and she 18 until those three months had elapsed? :unsure:


#180

S

SeanBZA

Could be that he was immigrating, and she was his sponsor, which is common enough.


#181

SteveY

SteveY

Last few times I have tried to use Spinrite 6 I have run into the "Invalid Partition for Drive Size" error message, I hope 6.1 is released soon.



#182

C

cyberzod

SteveY,

I ran across this on a >1TB drive formatted by Windows 10. I stuck the drive in a Linux machine and backed up the boot sector/partition table with dd bs=512 count=1 if=/dev/sdb of=/root/BigDriveSector0.bin (Your options to dd might need to change.)
I then zeroed the boot sector (again with dd), popped the drive back into my Windows system and booted spinrite without complaints on the "empty" drive. After it was done, I restored the boot sector and all was well again. If you feel comfortable with dd, you might have similar results.


#183

D

DanR

I hope 6.1 is released soon.
As do we all. :)

Steve is apparently doing a total re-code for SpinRite 6.1. Per his comments in the development NG, this re-coding must either be done now, or later when transitioning to SR 7.0 (UEFI boot).

Per Steve, doing it now will produce a much better SR 6.1 product while saving beau coup time when transitioning to SR 7.0 after SR 6.1 is released.

And so we wait . . .


#184

C

cybernard

Well its now nearly september, any updates?


#185

Steve

Steve

Well its now nearly september, any updates?
Anyone who's interested in following SpinRite's development more closely should arrange to participate with the gang over in GRC's text-only grc.spinrite.dev newsgroup. Setup any NNTP newsreader (there are many to choose among) and aim it at our news server at news.grc.com. There's where all of the development work is going on. I will be posting updates here as major milestones are passed, but not the daily blow-by-blow. :)


#186

C

cybernard

Anyone who's interested in following SpinRite's development more closely should arrange to participate with the gang over in GRC's text-only grc.spinrite.dev newsgroup. Setup any NNTP newsreader (there are many to choose among) and aim it at our news server at news.grc.com. There's where all of the development work is going on. I will be posting updates here as major milestones are passed, but not the daily blow-by-blow. :)
I tried setting up thunderbird email news account, and it won't download any messages?
Is thunderbird compatible? Do I need to change port numbers or something?


#187

Steve

Steve

I tried setting up thunderbird email news account, and it won't download any messages?
Is thunderbird compatible? Do I need to change port numbers or something?
I was going to suggest Thunderbird. It works great and many of our participants are using it without any trouble. So, in short, it should work! (y)


#188

D

DanR

I tried setting up thunderbird email news account, and it won't download any messages?
Is thunderbird compatible? Do I need to change port numbers or something?
Thunderbird is fully compatible. For more info see here:


Scroll down that page for the details. That should get you up and reading posts in no time! :)


#189

M

Mervyn Haynes

Anyone who's interested in following SpinRite's development more closely should arrange to participate with the gang over in GRC's text-only grc.spinrite.dev
I will be posting updates here as major milestones are passed, but not the daily blow-by-blow.
Steve, even in that news group updates are pretty thin on the ground lately! How about a weekly update so we all know what's going on. Even SN has not had much SR update news.


#190

Steve

Steve

As we know, it swings between nothing happening and a torrential flood that no one but I can keep up with! <g> Everyone knows I'm still alive from the podcast. And I do post updates periodically when I have anything to say.


#191

M

Mervyn Haynes

And I do post updates periodically when I have anything to say.
Thanks for the update you now posted on the .dev group Steve


#192

Aldo

Aldo

Yeah, that's fine for reading, but what about posting and replying? Should the outgoing connection use an SMTP port or an NNTP port? How do you fake out TB's account wizards to set the outgoing Username+Password to be the same, while still putting a real reply-to email address in the From: field? While trying this, I exactly once thought I saw a Password input box. Subsequent attempts result in a failed outgoing connection, and do not ask for an updated password.


#193

P

PHolder

Well I have no advice for you to use Thunderbird, but I use XanaNews with great ease.


#194

Aldo

Aldo

Yes I have been using XanaNews for a year and it's terrific. But I also want to learn more about making TBird sit up and beg Haha The question is whether anyone posts/replies to GRC's newsgroups from TB, using the recommended unusual setup. Maybe a standard setup would work if canceling articles is not needed? Afaik cancel is supported only with the recommended login style. Or, try a Username+Password that is only a real email address, instead of a real password - maybe TB will handle that better.


#195

D

DanR

Yeah, that's fine for reading, but what about posting and replying? Should the outgoing connection use an SMTP port or an NNTP port? How do you fake out TB's account wizards to set the outgoing Username+Password to be the same, while still putting a real reply-to email address in the From: field? While trying this, I exactly once thought I saw a Password input box. Subsequent attempts result in a failed outgoing connection, and do not ask for an updated password.
SMTP - That should be the default. I believe all you need is a unique user name. No need to specify that as the password.

Are you set up to read posts in TB? If not, that should be done first.


#196

P

PHolder

Should the outgoing connection use an SMTP port or an NNTP port?
Both? They're different things. SNMP is for email, NNTP is for usenet news. Steve's server only supplies NNTP, SNMP is supplied by your email supplier.


#197

Tazz

Tazz

I use Thunderbird, Here's what my server settings are, I use the same SMTP server as my email:

Thunderbird.PNG


#198

D

DanR

oth? They're different things. SNMP is for email, NNTP is for usenet news. Steve's server only supplies NNTP, SNMP is supplied by your email supplier.
My TB setup is the same as Tazz.

But in the Outgoing Server (SMTP) setup it is clearly SMTP, the same as for my email.

I presume Steve's GRC news server therefore uses SMTP?


#199

P

PHolder

I presume Steve's GRC news server therefore uses SMTP?
SMTP is the simple mail transfer protocol. Normally on port 25. (But probably on 825 or something these days, if SSL is involved... I haven't configured SMTP or POP or IMAP since I got GMail in like 2004.) Steve doesn't supply email services that I am aware of.

Edit: It looks like there are many SSL SMTP ports wow: 587, 25, 465 and 2525


#200

D

DanR

Steve doesn't supply email services that I am aware of.
No, he does not! :)

I can only state what I see in my TB setup. It seems like the GRC news server ought to use NNTP. But TB seems to be indicating SMTP.


#201

D

DanR

Ahhh . . .yes! The GRC News server does use NNTP. Upon scrolling down the page at


It is very clear there. But TB seems to hide this fact. Or I just do not know how to see that in TB's account settings.


#202

Aldo

Aldo

Okay I figured it out. The secret passphrase needs to be compatible with an SMTP username; it cannot contain any special characters that a password generator may come up with. The attached PDF is a how-to, with screenshots.

I use Interlink Mail & News - a modern and actively developed incarnation of the Thunderbird-style technology base, built on a modern and actively developed incarnation of UXP, the best application platform from the Mozilla of old.

Interlink is much more capable of handling my demanding email usage than recent versions of TB, and doesn't crash nearly as often.

To clear up confusion above, *reading* from a news server uses an NNTP port on an incoming connection, while *posting* to a news server uses an SMTP port on an outgoing connection. This does *not* mean the server accepts email. Both connections can be an SSL port or a non-SSL port.

Attachments


  • GRC News for Interlink Thunderbird.PDF
    339.1 KB · Views: 704

#203

Barry Wallis

Barry Wallis

Okay I figured it out. The secret passphrase needs to be compatible with an SMTP username; it cannot contain any special characters that a password generator may come up with. The attached PDF is a how-to, with screenshots.

I use Interlink Mail & News - a modern and actively developed incarnation of the Thunderbird-style technology base, built on a modern and actively developed incarnation of UXP, the best application platform from the Mozilla of old.

Interlink is much more capable of handling my demanding email usage than recent versions of TB, and doesn't crash nearly as often.

To clear up confusion above, *reading* from a news server uses an NNTP port on an incoming connection, while *posting* to a news server uses an SMTP port on an outgoing connection. This does *not* mean the server accepts email. Both connections can be an SSL port or a non-SSL port.
Thank you very much. That PDF file is exactly what I needed.


#204

Aldo

Aldo

Thank you very much. That PDF file is exactly what I needed.
Might have to take another pass at this. Cancel worked a few times, and then I continued changing things supposedly to agree with the how-to, and eventually Cancel became greyed out. Duh. Will try again tomorrow.


#205

D

DanR

Cancel worked a few times
Thanks for the PDF! Very useful.

I was experimenting with TB late last night re posting and cancelling. There was a lot of seemingly random non-repeatability re cancelling posts., and with getting/not getting a Poster header line. :(


#206

A

AlanD

There was some discussion and testing in the Newsgroups some months ago about this issue.

Basically, when Steve did the latest upgrade to the News Server, he also had to apply his customisations for CECIL-ID (required to allow cancellation) and support of alternative ports.

IIRC, the concensus was that, for some unknown reason, if you posted using the secure port, in some cases, the post did not get a Poster-ID, and thus cancellations could not match it. There were no problems when using the standard NNTP port (119) and since postings are inherently public, there seemed little urgency in diagnosing and fixing the problem on the secure port.


#207

pioruns

pioruns

Hi all!
Any news on Spinrite progress? No update on roadmap post since March! :D


#208

P

PHolder

Any news on Spinrite progress?
I'll point you at this recent-ish post from Steve:


#209

D

DanR

Any news on Spinrite progress? No update on roadmap post since March!
Steve has been concentrating on SpinRite 6.1 for the last 6+ months, doing a complete re-code. He has very recently been running the new code on his hardware, flushing out and fixing coding errors, edge cases, etc. Good progress is being made.

He may be close to having something for public testing. It looks like a test of the enhanced controller and drive detection and enumeration system, and drive benchmarking, important for SpinRite operation.


#210

M

Mervyn Haynes

Steve has been concentrating on SpinRite 6.1 for the last 6+ months,
More like 21+ months! Did he not start after the completion of SQRL in January 2020


#211

D

DanR

More like 21+ months! Did he not start after the completion of SQRL in January 2020
Depends on your perspective, I'd say.

2020 was the year of AHCI technology development. After a few months of preparation, Steve began working on AHCI drive technology at the end of April 2020. Along the way InitDisk 1.0 was developed and released in late June 2020.

In Sep 2020 the now complete AHCI drive tech was merged with the complete IDE tech from 2013 to produce a "hybrid' tool that would handle AHCI and IDE controllers with equal ease. Activity in the fall of 2020 resulted in the release of four (4) enhanced and improved versions of InitDisk, bringing it to the still current 5.0 release, and culminating in the release of ReadSpeed 1.0 on Dec. 24, 2020.

2021 began with Steve pondering things, making some design decisions, etc., and then beginning to code SpinRite 6.1. Along the way he made an important decision to do a total major re-code of SpinRite 6.1 to facilitate the eventual transition to the RTOS-32 environment for SpinRite 7.x development. That effort is essentially complete. The result will also be a much improved SpinRite 6.1 for us.

Steve now has SpinRite 6.1 running on his hardware for debugging. Indications are he may soon have something for public testing (per my post just above), and eventually beta testing for registered SpinRite owners only. Nope, no timeline exists for this. :) It will be when it will be. :)

In summary, if you include the 4 months of 2013 activity, 12 months of 2020, and 9 months (so far) of 2021, that is 25 months and counting. If the the SpinRite coding of 2021 is considered as a separate entity (with what came before as preliminary stuff), that is 7 months or so. I do not see either view as being any more or less right or wrong than the other.


#212

pioruns

pioruns

Excellent. I have joined newsgroups server. Lots of info there, thanks!


#213

M

Mervyn Haynes

Depends on your perspective, I'd say.
I guess so, but all the work was necessary for 6.1 development.

if you include the 4 months of 2013 activity
Forgot about that! Wow over 2 years so far. My prediction of it taking 3 years is not going to be so far off.


#214

Teddy7

Teddy7

I've used SpinRite since it first released, but I've not kept up with the latest releases.
How do I get in touch with you for the current one?


#215

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

I've used SpinRite since it first released, but I've not kept up with the latest releases.
How do I get in touch with you for the current one?
The current release is 6.0. https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

Steve is working on 6.1, but it's currently in Alpha. https://grc.com/groups/spinrite.dev:39009

If you want to test the Alpha, please use an Initdisk formatted flashdrive. https://www.grc.com/initdisk.htm

Code:
C:\>initdisk.exe freedos

If you want to keep up with 6.1's development, I recommend joining the spinrite.dev newsgroup: https://www.grc.com/discussions.htm


#216

michaelrowe01

michaelrowe01

I've been trying to post here via my iPad and News Tap Lite, but for some reason it won't let me post. I've been using SpinRite for a long time, and can't wait for 6.1 (and 7!). Would be glad to do anything testing on 6.1.


#217

C

cbrillow

Would be glad to do anything testing on 6.1.
Personally, I wish there were a 'Sticky' post here to help wannabe Spinrite 6.1 testers find their way, as there are a number of non-obvious steps that have to be taken. There's a very clear post in the Gitlab forum at this URL:

https://dev.grc.com/Steve/spinrite-v6.1/-/wikis/How-can-you-test-SpinRite?

Now, if you've already clicked on it, you've probably seen that they want you to sign up for a Gitlab account. The whole process isn't as easy as it would seem, because I believe that Steve has a set something in place to prevent bots from getting in, or somesuch. It took me a while to find it, but I stumbled around in posts here and on grc.spinrite.dev newsgroup until I found the information to put all the pieces together. If I could remember, I'd point to the relevant posts, but unfortunately, I don't recall them. Once I got my Gitlab login, I saved the URL to a couple of relevant posts and have been able to follow things ever since. Maybe someone else can fill in the blanks for you.

It's frustrating and almost seems like they intentionally make it hard to get started and participate. But it does work and there are a lot of very bright, committed users working on testing things out.


#218

D

DanR

It's frustrating and almost seems like they intentionally make it hard to get started and participate. But it does work and there are a lot of very bright, committed users working on testing things out.
It is that way for two reasons. One is for bot control as you noted. The other is to minimize the number of members for now. There are already plenty of testers there.

When SpinRite does go into Beta testing Steve will announce that here in these forums with appropriate explicit information for signing up. Then all registered SpinRite owners will be welcome to join in. Until then it is best to be patient. The wait should not be that much longer.


#219

michaelrowe01

michaelrowe01

Thanks @cbrillow - Will check out the Gitlab requirements. I've got a Github account so fully understand the tool.


#220

michaelrowe01

michaelrowe01

@DanR Just tried the link and tried to create an account. It seems to still ask for an acount. I setup an account at GitLab, using my GitHub linkage, but still can't log in to dev.grc.com - I guess I'll be waiting.


#221

P

PHolder

I guess I'll be waiting.
Well the trick is that the ONE specific page https://dev.grc.com/users/sign_up is protected with old style HTTP Auth protection. It needs a specific hard coded userID and password, which Steve has requested stay only listed on the Newsgroup. (If you don't provide it, you will receive an error: 401 Authorization Required
nginx )

So the ideal solution is to join the newsgroup, which is not always a trivial experience, but you can start that at https://www.grc.com/discussions.htm


#222

R

Ron_Arad

Following your description in Ep 912 of 6.1 crashing on certain disks, I ran 6.0 today on a 2013 HGST 1TB drive from 2013 and spinrite crashed while doing a level 2 scan (at 80% along the 2nd partition which is 850G in size),
see attached. The drive was connected via a USB3 station (Blueendless HD05), hope this is informative and useful.

Attachments


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  • adapter.jpg
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  • error.jpg
    error.jpg
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#223

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

Following your description in Ep 912 of 6.1 crashing on certain disks, I ran 6.0 today on a 2013 HGST 1TB drive from 2013 and spinrite crashed while doing a level 2 scan (at 80% along the 2nd partition which is 850G in size),
see attached. The drive was connected via a USB3 station (Blueendless HD05), hope this is informative and useful.
Steve has already fixed the 6.0 crashes in 6.1. How does 6.1 Alpha 21 handle that drive? You'll have to connect it to a SATA port since Alpha 20 limits BIOS drives (USB, SAS, NVMe, RAID, etc) to 137 GB due to the discovery of a severe memory corruption issue in multiple BIOSes.


#224

P

PHolder

hope this is informative and useful.
In general Steve has explicitly said he is NOT receiving SpinRite feedback for development versions here in these forums. The only place he wants to receive such feedback is on his newsgroup which has information and links for a specific GIT wrapper for opening report tickets. If you are interested in being involved at that level, start by going here: https://www.grc.com/discussions.htm (Read the instructions carefully.... and Steve's newsgroup server is currently having an issue with secured connections, so you'd need to configure your reader to not use them.)


#225

foreverinbeta

foreverinbeta

Has roadmap changed as far as SAS support in SR 7.0X ??? Since this is a 2 year old threads that was recently referenced in the newgroups.


#226

Steve

Steve

I would be glad to look into adding SAS support once the various mainstream drivers are in place. Ideally, I would need to have hardware documentation from the adapter manufacturer. It might be possible to use the Linux source to reverse-engineer the driver from that, but that would be less certain. But I cannot make any promises at this point. I cannot see that far into the future to know what the world will look like at that point.