Unable to boot into newly created USB thumbdrive

[omry]

Hi,
I am trying to boot into SpinRite 6.1 (release 4) and I can't get my system to boot into the newly created bootable thumb drive:
This is what I did:
1. Installed on a as a bootable thumb drive ("Install SpinRite on USB") and tried to boot into it by changing the BIOS boot order. The system refused to boot from it.
2. inspected thumb drive content. seems ok.
3. tried a second USB thumb drive. still couldn't boot into it.
4. created a new Ubuntu bootable disk with Rufus (ISO mode) on the first thumb drive and booted into it successfully.

It looks like something is wrong with the created bootable thumb drive.
Any advice on how to proceed?

 

[DanR]

Welcome to the forums!

It appears that your computer is UEFI booting. That is NOT compatible with SpinRite 6.1 booting and running. A BIOS-DOS boot is required for that. I expect there is nothing wrong with your bootable thumb drive,

You need to go into the BIOS setup and look for a CSM setting. That would need to be enabled (and UEFI boot and Secure boot both disabled). Please see this article for more information:

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-csm-capable-uefi-machines.968/

 

[omry]

Thanks, activating CSM solved it for me.
Unfortunately, SR 6.1 can't see my NVME drive, which was what I was hoping to scan.
I'll dig in the forums to see if there is a solution for that.

 

[ColbyBouma]

Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is try a different computer. SpinRite 6.1 relies on the BIOS for access to NVMe drives. SpinRite 7 will support NVMe natively.

 

[Scott]

You could try running under VirtualBox, where you will be able to map your NVMe drive to look like a SATA drive

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-run-spinrite-on-a-uefi-only-machine-part-1-of-5.1613/

 

[omry]

You could try running under VirtualBox, where you will be able to map your NVMe drive to look like a SATA drive

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-run-spinrite-on-a-uefi-only-machine-part-1-of-5.1613/

The NVME is my boot disk so I will need to do this from a live CD. Not sure it's worth the headache for me.(I just want to see if It can improve the disk performance).

 

[DanR]

The NVME is my boot disk so I will need to do this from a live CD. Not sure it's worth the headache for me.(I just want to see if It can improve the disk performance).

Do you do image backups?

If so, just do a new image backup and then immediately restore it. That would re-write (refresh) all data on the drive, effectively accomplishing what a SpinRite level 3 scan would do. Drive performance ought to improve noticeably.

Yes, a SpinRite level 3 scan would be much more comprehensive and thus desirable. But as been already noted in this thread, that will have to wait for SpinRite 7.

Note: Some systems BIOS are capable of seeing an internal NVMe drive as a BIOS drive. This would allow the drive to be SpinRite scanned albeit at very s-l-o-w BIOS I/O speed. You might take another look in the BIOS settings for something that would allow this (there may not be anything).

 

[fairlane32]

Me patiently awaiting SR 7 so I can run it on all my Dell devices since they are all UEFI only.

 

[Wolfkc]

Welcome to the forums!

It appears that your computer is UEFI booting. That is NOT compatible with SpinRite 6.1 booting and running. A BIOS-DOS boot is required for that. I expect there is nothing wrong with your bootable thumb drive,

You need to go into the BIOS setup and look for a CSM setting. That would need to be enabled (and UEFI boot and Secure boot both disabled). Please see this article for more information:

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-csm-capable-uefi-machines.968/

That's so unfortunate.