FYI SpinRite's Development Roadmap

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

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

 

[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!

 

[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.

 

[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/

 

[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!

 

[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

 

[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!!!!

 

[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

 

[uteck]

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

 

[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 surrent SpinRite to boot without that setting.

Nope! The new SpinRite, 6.1, will *not* care! There will be no need to change that setting with SpinRite 6.1.

 

[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.