Export thread

  • DNS Benchmark v2 is Finished and Available!
    Guest:
    That's right. It took an entire year, but the result far more accurate and feature laden than we originally planned. The world now has a universal, multi-protocol, super-accurate, DNS resolver performance-measuring tool. This major second version is not free. But the deal is, purchase it once for $9.95 and you own it — and it's entire future — without ever being asked to pay anything more. For an overview list of features and more, please see The DNS Benchmark page at GRC. If you decide to make it your own, thanks in advance. It's a piece of work I'm proud to offer for sale. And if you should have any questions, many of the people who have been using and testing it throughout the past year often hang out here.
    /Steve.
  • Be sure to checkout “Tips & Tricks”
    Dear Guest Visitor → Once you register and log-in please checkout the “Tips & Tricks” page for some very handy tips!

    /Steve.

  • BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware

    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

    GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.

    The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.

    You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

Write image to USB floppy drive

#1

D

drwtsn32

I have a USB floppy drive. If I try to write the SpinRite 6.1 floppy image to it, it complains that it's not really a 1.44MB floppy drive.

Any way to work around this?


#2

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

Is the floppy disk you're trying to write to 1.44 MB, or 720 KB?

Are you trying to write it directly from SpinRite, or are you trying to write the image with a different program?


#3

D

drwtsn32

It's 1.44MB. I'm trying to create the floppy image from the SpinRite exe running in Windows 10 by clicking the "Create Boot Diskette" button.

Is there another way to write the image? I also have the zip download but the img file is 8MB for whatever reason.


#4

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

I don't know where my USB floppy drive is right now, but I'm pretty sure I was able to use it back during the 6.1 alpha tests to create floppy disks with SpinRite.

Does Windows show the disk as 1.44 MB?

Is the write protect switch enabled on the disk? I think SpinRite throws a different error for that, but it's something else to check.

Have you tried any other disks?

The 8 MB IMG file you can download is for flash drives. It gives Mac and Linux users a way to create a SpinRite boot drive without borrowing a Windows computer.


#5

D

drwtsn32

SpinRite refused to even try writing the image. I believe it didn't recognize the drive as a floppy drive.

Windows showed the disk as 1.44MB and was able to format it no problem. Write protect tab not set.

I'm not sure what happened, but today I tried again and it worked just fine. SpinRite recognized it as a real floppy drive and wrote the image OK. Shrug...


Top Bottom
Back