SR6.1 r4 says 'This drive cannot be accessed' What does that mean?

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Suffolkpunch

Member
Sep 29, 2024
10
0
Running SR 6.1 produced the following result.

Code:
  ############################################################################
  # SpinRite Detailed Technical Log generated at  3:45 pm on Oct 30th, 2024. #
  ############################################################################
                            SpinRite v6.1 - Release 4     
 
 Type|Port|BIOS|Runtime|Size|            Model             |      Serial     
 ----+----+----+-------+----+------------------------------+-------------------
 AHCI|  0 | 81 | 17,407|120G|KINGSTON SV300S37A120G        |50026B7258005399 
 AHCI|  1 | 82 | 17,392|1.0T|WDC WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0        |WD-WCC3F5NS7J9C   
 BIOS| 80 | 80 |  ...  |4.0G|This is the system boot drive |                 
 BIOS| 83 | 83 |  ...  |....|This drive cannot be accessed |                 
 BIOS| 84 | 84 |  ...  |....|This drive cannot be accessed |                 
 BIOS| 85 | 85 |  ...  |....|This drive cannot be accessed |                 
 BIOS| 86 | 86 |  ...  |....|This drive cannot be accessed |

What does "This drive cannot be accessed" mean? How do I find out what ports 83-86 are?

The Win 10 PC has a Kingston SSD and a WD spinning drive. It also has external USB drives plugged-in but not powered on.
 
The external USB drives cannot be accessed because they are NOT powered on.

While what I quoted is indeed true, powered off devices are indeed inaccessible, Dan must have skipped his breakfast this morning, cause it is nonsense to assume that DOS would report something it can't see. DOS doesn't have a memory for things that are powered off.

It has to be something that DOS can see, and create a drive entry for, but that SpinRite doesn't support. Most likely it's something in your system like one of those all-in-on flash memory readers?

In any case, since it see the two drives you expect it to see, I wouldn't spend any time worrying about things it's not seeing that you don't expect to see anyway. If you REALLY want to know more, there should be some utilities on the SpinRite image to help, you could run those and send the results here and hope that they could be decoded to expand on what SpinRite is seeing. The utilities are also available on the GRC site, such as https://www.grc.com/dev/SpinRite/DrivEnum.exe and https://www.grc.com/dev/SpinRite/PCI.exe
 
Those are usually from the built-in memory card reader. For some reason they create virtual disks for each slot when they're empty, but they set them to 0 bytes. This greatly confuses poor SpinRite 😁
 
Thanks everyone.

According to the PC's product description it has has an internal 52-in-1 card reader. Googling it, reveals that the 52-in-1 card reader is a brand of memory card reader with 4 sockets:
An internal USB 1.1/2.0 device fits into 3.5" drive bay to save the desktop space. It is equipped with four sockets to support Support Compact Flash I, Compact Flash 2, Micro Drive, Secure Digital, Multi Media Card, MemorySick and Smart Media.
Somewhat to my embarrassment, looking more closely at the PC's front panel indeed reveals a memory card reader! Ooops!

So that matches what Coulby wrote. Thanks Coulby!
 
Similar question with a twist…

This week I have run SpinRite 6.1 on about a dozen old SATA drives and have been impressed that almost all of them have been good, even though some were purchased and first used in 2007!

Two drives have had issues however:
1. SpinRite detection: ‘Cannot access this drive.’
2. SpinRite message: ‘S.M.A.R.T. parameters exceeded.’

I saw a menu selection to reset S.M.A.R.T. parameters, but I’m not able to select it.

Any helpful suggestions?
 
1. SpinRite detection: ‘Cannot access this drive.’
Please share a screenshot and log files. There are multiple things that can cause errors like this.
2. SpinRite message: ‘S.M.A.R.T. parameters exceeded.’
SMART has a health indicator for each attribute. If SpinRite detects an unhealthy attribute, it warns you. These attributes will show up in red on the SMART screens.
I saw a menu selection to reset S.M.A.R.T. parameters, but I’m not able to select it.
I don't remember seeing that screen. Would you be willing to share a screenshot of this as well?

A couple notes about attachments: they must be no more than 500 kB each, and logs work best when you ZIP them. Your log files are in the SRLOGS folder of your SpinRite boot drive.