SR 6.1 hangs after discovering disks

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cnicules

Member
Jan 31, 2025
7
0
Hello,
On my HP microserver G8, with 4 drives, SR detects the drives but then hangs.
The 4 drives are in 2 by 2 RAID 1, using the HP SmartArray.
Any ideas besides moving the disks to another PC.
The 16G is a SD card used to boot esxi, i'll try to remove it and report back.
All this is due the alarm that one of the SSD has failed, but looks like after reboots all look good again. At least alarm wise.

Screenshot 2025-01-31 at 14.27.20.png

Stopped here now for nearlly 1h, time i searched maybe i'm not the only one :)
Happy to debug.
Best Regards,
Ciprian

Edit1: the 16G is a Sandisk and it passes all green a Validrive on a Win10 laptop
Edit2: SpeedTest on the 4 drives is
Screenshot 2025-01-31 at 14.51.28.png

edit3: observed i'm using 6.1 r3, downloaded r4 and removed the 16G SD, still hangs :(
Screenshot 2025-01-31 at 15.05.58.png
 
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the 16G is a Sandisk and it passes all green a Validrive on a Win10 laptop
This drive was detected and enumerated properly. It should not have been causing any problem.

The BIOS seems to think it is seeing something else, i.e. an additional drive? I'm thinking SpinRite may simply be waiting for a response from the BIOS that is never coming?

You might consider going into the BIOS setup to see what the BIOS is seeing? And perhaps disable that? Just a thought.
 
According to ReadSpeed, it looks like drive 83 is one of the SSDs. SpinRite already found both of those on the AHCI controller, so I don't know why it's getting so hung up on the BIOS address for it. I remember encountering something kind of similar where a REALLY bad drive caused SpinRite to hang in Discovery for something like 45 minutes. It did eventually complete and let me continue. Steve's GitLab server is offline right now, otherwise I would dig up that ticket. I don't think he fixed that issue, but I don't remember all of the details.

I don't think RAID controllers got much testing during SpinRite 6.1's development. SpinRite's main focus is regular desktops with SATA controllers. I suspect you will need to move the drives to another computer to run SpinRite on them, especially that one SSD. It's also possible that Discovery may eventually finish if you leave it long enough.

Edit: I found some screenshots on my drive from the ticket I was thinking of (605). It looks like the problem was quite different. It was an SD-to-SATA adapter, and most of the time the screen displayed a warning message.
1738370089581.png
 
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According to ReadSpeed, it looks like drive 83 is one of the SSDs. SpinRite already found both of those on the AHCI controller, so I don't know why it's getting so hung up on the BIOS address for it. I remember encountering something kind of similar where a REALLY bad drive caused SpinRite to hang in Discovery for something like 45 minutes. It did eventually complete and let me continue. Steve's GitLab server is offline right now, otherwise I would dig up that ticket. I don't think he fixed that issue, but I don't remember all of the details.

I don't think RAID controllers got much testing during SpinRite 6.1's development. SpinRite's main focus is regular desktops with SATA controllers. I suspect you will need to move the drives to another computer to run SpinRite on them, especially that one SSD. It's also possible that Discovery may eventually finish if you leave it long enough.

Edit: I found some screenshots on my drive from the ticket I was thinking of (605). It looks like the problem was quite different. It was an SD-to-SATA adapter, and most of the time the screen displayed a warning message.
View attachment 1497
it must be something related with the SoftRaid, and is not getting what it needs to finish.
 
The RAID software would only be in effect when running the native OS, SpinRite runs under FreeDOS .

It does look like some of the Smart Array controllers have a setting to put them in AHCI mode, did you enable that? You didn’t specify the model of your Smart Array controller but I found that info in this manual:

 
Try:

SPINRITE NORAMTEST

and or:

SPINRITE NOVERIFY

both =

SPINRITE NORAMTEST NOVERIFY


Let us know, of course.

.
Hi,
noverify give and error, i presume is skipverify and after a frightening messages i hit enter :)
Screenshot 2025-02-01 at 14.16.11.png

Looks like drive 83 is one of the Raid1, strange is that it found only 1, as now i have made 2x3T raids.
It passed further, i selected the first 2 disks, as those are anyhow fresh. And started a level 3. For the 4T it estimates 15h.
I did before a readspeed
fhfh.jpeg

and now we wait.

Ah, the FAQ page has different CLI options; it may need an update.
Cheers
 
The RAID software would only be in effect when running the native OS, SpinRite runs under FreeDOS .

It does look like some of the Smart Array controllers have a setting to put them in AHCI mode, did you enable that? You didn’t specify the model of your Smart Array controller but I found that info in this manual:

True, sorry, I forgot that bit of info.
It actually a 120, not 140, HP Dynamic Smart Array B120i Controller.
Full specs of the box are here https://h20427.www2.hpe.com/pdf/HP_ProLiant_MicroServer_Gen8_quicspec.pdf
At next boot, i'll check how is configured, maybe i used to boot from it.
 
noverify give and error, i presume is skipverify and after a frightening messages i hit enter :)
cheers
My bad - Steve uses different words for similar effects, I've suggested accepting synonyms and abbreviations. ;-)

Options to limit SpinRite 6.1 inner sub-modules are:

SKIPVERITY

NORAMTEST

FORCEBIOS

DYNASTAT 0

NONE

KEYBOARD

BLANKING 0

GRAPHIC

QUIET

ROCFG

VIDEO


... are there more?

These have helped me in the past:

CONFIG.SYS containing only BUFFERS=98 or no CONFIG.SYS at all.

No AUTOEXEC.BAT or 0-byte AUTOEXEC.BAT to bypass date and time prompts.

Check the boot drive before use, ChkDSk /r, ValiDrive.

Loads of free space.

Copy all Logs off the boot drive before starting so new logs have no
competition.

Try turning off logging.

Simplify the test environment by attaching only ONE drive to test.

Test in a known successful environment, such as a spare computer
only for testing drives.

Update SpinRite, re-download a fresh SpinRite and build a new boot
drive.

Compare to SpinRite 6.0, which still works in many situations on smaller
than 537 GB drives - who knows the GB threshold for SpinRite 6.0
DynaStat misbehavior? Download a new SpinRite 6.0.

Compare FreeDOS KERNEL.SYS and SpinRite 6.1 KERNEL.SYS.

- - - - -

Do others have tips and tricks?

Thanks.

.
 
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Hello,
SpinRite finished on all 4 SATA disks with no errors and slight improvements in speed.
I checked the Arrays, and none is set to "Exposed".

Is there any good information inside the debug file?
 
Hello,
SpinRite finished on all 4 SATA disks with no errors and slight improvements in speed.
I checked the Arrays, and none is set to "Exposed".
Is there any good information inside the debug file?

Yay, SPINRITE SKIPVERIFY worked.

I wonder if SPINRITE will work now without needing SKIPVERIFY.

( Remember to always test using SPINRITE NORAMTEST regardless - test RAM and drives in separate SPINRITE runs, exiting in between runs. )

- - - - -

Some folks here can interpret the SPINRITE DIAG log if you share it.

.
 
Yay, SPINRITE SKIPVERIFY worked.

I wonder if SPINRITE will work now without needing SKIPVERIFY.

( Remember to always test using SPINRITE NORAMTEST regardless - test RAM and drives in separate SPINRITE runs, exiting in between runs. )

- - - - -

Some folks here can interpret the SPINRITE DIAG log if you share it.

.
It still does not work with verification. The disks are fine; they don't have any issues. Something else in the disk enumeration is causing the freeze.
Anyway, i need to get my setup back up and running. I can schedule downtime on it to test 1-2-3 things if needed.