Waiting for drive: <count>

[Larc]

first off, i believe there is a problem with the drive, i was able to run on a different drive, so not necessarily something wrong with spinrite, but i'd like to know what is happening.

during the startup it took a bit longer than i'd expect.

then in discovering system's mass storage devices it showed me a model with no type/port/runtime/size and a lot of upper left cornering "waiting for drive" with a countdown that repeatedly starts back up at 120. it doesn't usually make it to 0, but it does sometimes.

after a while it gave me a red box saying "spin rite is attempting to confirm this drive's data transfer safety."

I'm still getting a lot of the waiting for drive with countdowns, been going for a couple of hours.

 

[PHolder]

You didn't say what type of drive this is, but it sounds like it's being very stubbornly slow to respond to some of SpinRite's requests, which given that failure mode, I'm guessing it's magnetic media.

It sounds to me like this drive is on its last legs. Unless you're trying to recover valuable data, I would permanently retire it.

 

[DanR]

after a while it gave me a red box saying "spin rite is attempting to confirm this drive's data transfer safety."

I'm still getting a lot of the waiting for drive with countdowns, been going for a couple of hours.

I presume you are running SpinRite 6.1?

This does indeed sound like a rather troubled drive. Sometimes SpinRite's native AHCI/ATA/IDE drivers can be a bit too aggressive for a troubled drive.

One thing you might try is: C:\> spinrite forcebios

This will force SR 6.1 to work thru the BIOS for a slower/gentler approach.

I suspect PHolder is correct, however. This drive is very likely beyond hope.