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As I write this, Spinrite 6 has been running about 2 weeks on a WD 500gb external drive w/2 250gb partitions with TONS of clipart, fonts and other saved items. Each partition is about half full.

I am unable to change the screen view as the keyboard is nonresponsive... which also means I cannot stop/pause the scan using the ESC key. I am sure the program is working because if I stop to watch the monitor, numbers change. The numbers I can see (the Change View window is in the middle of the screen) are Cylinder = 6128, Head = 214, Sector = 25. This afternoon those #s were 6128/213/62, so it's definitely doing something. I can also see "Disk 1, Item 1" which I'm guessing means that it's only on the first partition...

My questions are:

1. How much longer will it take to run? Just an educated guess would be appreciated.

2. How many Cylinders are there on a 500gb drive? This may give an idea as to the estimated completion time... I've read that the answer may be 60801 cylinders, 255 heads and 63 sectors. Is this correct or does it vary?

3. Can I disconnect the cables while it's running and not make the problems worse (dumb ?, but I don't think I'm prepared to wait for months for this scan to complete; although, I have read that it's possible to take that long)?

A brief history... When connecting the drive to my PC it would be recognized intermittently for seconds only. I removed the drive from the case and connected it via internal cables. I had a nearly identical WD drive installed so I simply disconnected it and plugged in the problematic one (all other drives, printers, etc, were disconnected). No go... didn't recognize it at all and since it's not as easy to unplug an internal drive I reconnected the drive to the case's power/usb connectors and tried again. Still off an on, but with no real success. In my search for a solution, I read about Spinrite and have been giving it a "spin" for the last 10 days or so.

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

TIA
Sbergstc

Hi there and welcome!

First the legal nonsense: I do not represent Spinrite, I am just a Spinrite user. I have used it a lot over the years so I'm pretty familiar with it's quirks. The following is my advise. I cannot be held responsible for any damage to your hardware. Yada, yada, yada.


Okay, first off, you should never run Spinrite on a drive in a USB enclosure because:

a) Spinrite can't communicate directly with the hard drive controller via USB and thus can't really do it's job (in this mode Spinrite falls back to just running a standard full sector scandisk and allowing DOS to handle it with no recovery ability)

and b) since DOS only supports USB 1.1 it will take FOREVER or just slightly longer than the time required for the heat death of the known Universe.

You should always try to run Spinrite on a drive that's directly connected to an internal IDE or SATA port. You also don't want to use a non-standard controller because DOS will again fall back (as in the case of USB) to a legacy compatibility mode and not allow Spinrite to directly communicate with the controller. MOST modern PCs don't have this problem anymore since most of them can run even SATA in IDE compatibility mode. However some SATA and IDE controllers (especially those that support RAID even if RAID is disabled) can be a problem.

Many modern PCs with SATA controllers run in AHCI mode which sometimes prevents Spinrite from talking to the controller directly (it may even prevent Spinrite from running or prevent Spinrite from seeing a drive at all), however you can always switch the SATA controller to IDE Emulation (or sometimes called IDE Mode) just to run Spinrite.

IMPORANT: If you do have to change AHCI mode to IDE mode, then after scanning the drive with Spinrite, you MUST switch it back to AHCI mode before booting back into Windows otherwise Windows may not boot properly.

The easiest way to tell if Spinrite is directly communicating with the controller is to see if Spinrite is getting SMART data from the hard drive, and the simplest indicator of that is if Spinrite shows the temperature of the drive (it's displayed in the details window and also at the bottom of the screensaver status window). The temperature is sent by SMART. If SMART is not available there should also be a message in the status Window saying "SMART NOT AVAILABLE" or something to that effect and it won't show you stats on drive errors.

Okay, to answer your questions:

Yes, "Item 1" is the first partition.

1)
How much longer? Depends on the CPU speed, the Spinrite level (2 is faster than 4), the size of the drive, and the condition it's in. Also as I said before, a USB controller will take forever (this is why I build my own USB enclosures so I can remove the drives to run Spinrite 4 on them every 6 months or so).

A 500 Gb HDD in good condition can take 4 hours at level 2 and 12 hours at level 4. I have seen drives in bad condition run for 24 - 48 hours even at level 2. I have had a few drives that took weeks and even a month. I have a couple of dedicated old beige-box PCs on my bench I use just for running Spinrite.


2)
You can look up the number of cylinders for your drive by Googling the model number followed by the word "specs". You will get a manufacturer's data sheet which will give you that info. HOWEVER in DOS mode (which Spinrite runs under) a hard drive usually runs in LBA emulation so the number of cylinders may actually be less (BIOS abstracts the drive layout because DOS was never designed to hand drives as large as we use today).

I never pay attention to the number of cylinders - it's not important. Of far more importance is the percentage remaining number and the number of remaining sectors shown in the status window in Spinrite.


3)
You can turn the power off any time. Steve Gibson (author of Spinrite) has specifically stated on his Security Now podcast that Spinrite is designed to allow for loss of power during a Spinrite scan without damaging the drive or losing data.

HOWEVER you may first want to make a note of what percentage the drive is at in the current sector. Spinrite does give you the ability to resume a scan from any position by pressing SHIFT+ENTER when prompted at the start and entering the starting location (in percent) for each partition, and to skip any partitions you've already done. However you may want to start all over to allow Spinrite to actively repair damaged sectors which it hasn't been able to do while running from the USB enclosure the past 2 weeks.


BTW: The reason Spinrite is unresponsive to the keyboard during a scan is due to the fact that DOS poorly supports USB keyboard emulation. It works fine while you're in the menus, but once the scan starts DOS can't properly poll the keyboard. Some mobos handle USB emulation better than others. Best way to get around this is to use a PS/2 keyboard if your PC still has one. That's another reason I use a pair of older dedicated PCs for running Spinrite: both of them have PS/2 keyboard ports.

Some tips:

You ALWAYS want to have Spinrite be able to read the SMART data because Spinrite can tell you, before the scan starts, if the drive is in such poor condition that it would be risky to run a scan on it (this why, if possible, I always try to recover any data I can FIRST before running Spinrite). If a drive is in really bad shape, running ANY full sector scan on it can push it over the edge and kill it. Knowing you have a drive in really bad shape, you may not want to allow Spinrite to scan the whole thing - just enough to make it readable (remember half that drive is empty space anyway).

It's obvious in this case that your drive is probably failing so your priority is to make the drive readable enough to try to copy as much of the data over to another drive as possible. Forget about trying to salvage the drive.

If you have no choice, and are just interested in recovering data and not salvaging the drive, then always run a Spinrite level 2. Level 2 is designed to be as gentle on the drive as possible, it's designed only to recover data from sectors that are not readable or the drive is having difficulty reading, and it will take much less time.

Level 4 is really designed for preventative maintenance. It "refreshes" every sector on the drive strengthening the recording of every data bit. Keep in mind although the data is digital, a hard drive is an analog recording device and that data is saved as an analog magnetic recording. Just like an audio cassette tape, the recording gets weaker over time (the sector gets "stale"). I run level 4 on all my mission critical drives every 6 months for preventative maintenance to avoid problems.



If a drive is in really poor shape and is very slow to run Spinrite, you can try stopping Spinrite every 5 or 10% (making a note of where you left off) and then seeing if the drive is readable from Windows. Sometimes the data is fine but the partitioning tables or the volume table of contents is damaged. Most of that is stored in the first few clusters of a partition so just letting Spinrite recover 5% of a partition may allow you to at least see the partition and directory and copy some files. You may get CRC errors when copying some files, but with a little patience you can copy what you can, then let Spinrite work on it some more.

If Spinrite seems to be stuck on a particularly bad cluster, you can stop Spinrite and run it again and try skipping past the bad cluster by setting the starting location percentage a little higher (eg: if it was stuck at 10% then restart it at 11%). It could be that the cluster it was stuck on is completely empty or that there's no important data in there. Spinrite has no idea if there's data in a sector - it just tries to recover every sector as best as it can.


While you DO want the drive connected to an internal IDE or SATA port for running Spinrite, you are better off using a USB enclosure when trying to copy the files to another drive. This is because if the drive is in really bad shape (as it sounds like yours is) Windows will tend to hang when it hits bad sectors. It's easier to use a USB enclosure and then if you hit a bad sector while copying a file and Windows hangs, you can just pull the plug on the USB drive and then plug it back in which lets the drive reset. Windows might give you a delayed write error and crash the Explorer window you had open, but you can get right back to copying the next file without rebooting.

I just spend a half a day painfully recovering a few mission critical files from someone's hard drive that had an electronics problem last Thursday. I'd copy 2 or 3 files, and then the drive would disconnect and disappear from My Computer. I'd then flip the power switch on the USB enclosure to restart the drive and try to copy a couple of more files. Rinse and repeat. Eventually I got the 50 or so irreplaceable files they needed off the drive, including the Quickbooks company file (of course they hadn't made any Quicknbooks backups except to the local drive in 6 months).

These are some other hard-learned tips I have for copying files from a balky drive in general:

- Perform the file copying in Windows Safe Mode. This will disable write caching, file indexing and system restore on the drive. You do not want any background processes accessing a balky drive while you are trying to copy files from it.

- For this same reason you want to also manually disable the recycling bin on that balky drive (right click recycling bin, properties, configure each drive individually and uncheck the "Send deleted files to the recycling bin" for that drive.

Instead of Safe Mode, I boot into Mini-XP on Hirem's Boot CD (an invaluable tool for IT techs). This runs a very clean and small BartPE diagnostic version of Windows with minimal background processes. System restore, write caching, indexing, and the recycling bin are all disabled as are many other things that might try to access the drive. I tend to have better luck copying files from really balking drives this way. Hirem's CD is a little hard to find - it's free but only available on torrents because it violates copyright laws. A regular BartPE or the Ultimate Windows BootCD will also work (I prefer Hiren's Mini-XP because it boots and runs VERY fast - regular BartPE CDs can be very slow). In a pinch, Safe Mode works fine if you disable the recycling bin.

Keep in mind that the drive may not have any bad sectors at all but instead may have mechanical or electronic problems (a real possibility in your case from what you described). In which case all Spinrite can do is MAYBE make the partitions readable so you can try to get in there and copy some files. One way to tell is if you see a lot of "cable errors" in the Spinrite SMART status window. Cable errors means something is wrong with the mechanics, the controller or the cable. Running spinrite on the whole drive may be pointless, and may only make the problem worse.

Sorry for the essay - I tend to get long winded.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions.

Bob

I suppose there's one other thing I can think of:

From your description I suspect this drive has a mechanical/electronic problem and thus while Spinrite may help, I believe the drive will continue to be intermittent making the process of copying the data painfully tedious if possible at all. If you can get it so that Windows can see the files, then you can hopefully copy some or most of it.

If you're lucky, just running it the past 2 weeks may have done enough to make the drive partitions readable. Try it and see. If not, I would recommend starting again (with the drive connected internally) and run Level 2 on the first 5% of the drive and see if that helps. If not, let it run some more. If the scan seems to be going quickly enough and Spinrite is estimating a reasonable amount of time for completion then let it run all the way through (be aware that the time estimate will increase if it finds a really bad sector).

If Spinrite informs you the drive is in critical condition and this drive is for business and the data is absolutely irreplaceable and it's cost effective to spend $500 - $1000 on it, then you may want to just ship it off to a data recovery center. They have a better chance of getting all the data back or most of it, and it could be that running Spinrite on it will only make it worse.

If you have nothing to lose and there is no chance you will spend that much money on it, then I would let Spinrite try to salvage it.

If you need a referral for a data recovery center let me know. I only ever had one client use one and it was a good experience (although the company could not recover the drive). That company was recommended to me by other people who do IT work and they have a no charge policy if they don't recover any data: the only thing you pay for is the shipping and return shipping (unless you give them permission to destroy the drive). You ship them the drive and they then email you an estimate of the cost before they start working on it.

I don't have the info on the company handy right at the moment, but I can look it up.

Another thing you can try is to buy an identical hard drive and swap out the circuit board. It might work if there is something wrong on the board..

GL!

eGo

Firstly, thank you very much for replying... And I appreciate long winded replys. The more detail the better as far as I'm concerned...

I am going to follow all your instructions to get spinrite to work internally and see how things go... will respond with results and or questions.

egoCeNTRoNiX... I do have a nearly identical drive, same size & mfgr, but the model numbers are slightly different... WD5000AAKS vs WD5000AVVS. Can I swap the boards if it ends up being something electrical causing the problem?

These drives are more than a couple of years old and contain only personal files that I'm trying to recover and not worth anything but to me.

Thanks and I'll post back when I have more...
sbergstc

On the board swap, it's iffy. I have had some that were close like you mention and the board swap worked, but you'll need to look at the boards and make sure that everything lines up and that they are identical. If they're not, you could do even more damage.. I did a search on eBay and found a damaged drive of the same model number for $10 buy it now, don't recall what the shipping was.

eGo

I should have known it would be that easy

First problem... I cannot find any reference to IDE. My bios screens are as follows:

Main tabs at top: Main Advanced Power Boot Exit

Main:
Time Date Language Floppy NOT RELEVANT
1st Channel Device 0 WD2500JD
1st Channel Device 1 None
2nd Channel Device 0 None
2nd Channel Device 1 None
3rd Channel Device 0 DVD RW Drive
3rd Channel Device 1 DVD Drive
Greyed out: installed memory Bios Version Core version

Advanced:
CPU Type Intel Pent D
CPU Speed 3.00GHz/800MHz
CPU L2 Cache Size 1024kb x2
Plug & Play OS YES
Primary Video Adapter PCI
PCI Express Graphics Port Setup x16
PS/2 Mouse Auto Detect
Onboard PATA/SATA Adapters Both (choices: Disabled/PATA/SATA/Both)
Onboard PATA/SATA Configuration Enhanced Mode (choices: Combined/Enh)
USB Legacy Support Enabled
Onboard Lan Enabled
Onboard Lan Boot ROM Disabled
Onboard 1394 Enabled
Onboard Audio Auto

I/O Device Config
Hardware Monitor

Power: Not relevant

Boot:
Boot Device Priority:
1st boot device CD ROM Group
2nd HDD Group
3rd Disabled
4th Disabled

Floppy group (not installed)
CD Rom Group Boot Priority DVD RW Drive
HD Group Priority WDC WD250JD
Network Group Boot Priority (not installed)

Now What?

I am going to see if the drive is readable and maybe it won't matter .

Thanks,
Sharon

Well the good news is the drive is now readable. arty I'm in the process of copying the data to another drive.

I still want to be able to use SpinRite though... and I don't want it to take weeks to run. Any suggestions on how to get my computer to use IDE mode so I'll be able to do this in a more timely manner?

And I meant to write "I should have known it WOULDN'T be that easy."

Thanks,
sbergstc

Sorry I cant answer your questions, Sharon but welcome any way!!

I'm sure the brilliant minds here can help you out though.

Sharon,

I see nothing in those menus to configure the SATA controller to use IDE emulation. It might be buried deeper in a menu somewhere. If you can post the motherboard brand and model (or if this is an OEM PC then the make and model of the PC) maybe I can look it up.

QUESTION: If you run Spinrite, select level 2, and go to the select drives & partitions menu, does it show the boot drive in the computer (the 250Gb model WD2500JD)? If it does then you're okay, and Spinrite is compatible with your controllers as is. Try running a scan. Level 2 shouldn't takee long. You might even want to scan that drive at level 4 for preventative maintenance.

PS: Glad to hear you're able to copy the data. I guess Spinrite managed to do something during those two weeks.

Yes, I recall that it sees the main hard drive (c:/d:/e:/) and an HP personal drive (h:/) that came with the computer, but is removable. however, it did not see my 2 external WD drives (the one that was failing and a separate 1TB drive) or the internal WD drive attached to the SATA cables.

I've been doing a little research and I've seen that PATA is the same as IDE. So if that is the case how exactly would I change my Bios settings? For example, for the "Onboard PATA/SATA Adapters" where Both is the default choice, would I change that to PATA? And for "Onboard PATA/SATA Configuration" and Enhanced Mode is the default, would that be changed (choices: Combined/Enh)? I'm willing to try it to see if there's no risk in hurting anything. Now that I have SpinRite I plan on using it to keep my drives in shape. Will I have these kind of time problems with all my external drives running the via USB?

Desktop Model HP M7183C (Award ASUS P5LP-LE)

There is an update for my bios (SP35100), but because the board is oem, it won't install. My current Bios version is 3.17, and this update is 3.19. I've done a lot of reading about modifying the bios file so it would in fact update, but it scares me too much. I do not want to brick my machine.

sbergstc

Interestingly enough, without changing any settings... ALL drives, internal (3) and external (3) are now seen in SpinRite. I didn't mention this, but in the beginning, by accident I ran spinrite via usb on the WRONG drive (remember I said they were nearly identical ); and it didn't take very long (probably not much wrong with it). I thought this may be an explanation to my new status of WORKING AS DESIGNED... Maybe there were problems on one or both of the twin drives that when corrected, stopped interfering with SpinRite allowing ALL connected drives to be visible.

I am now running level 4 on them all... probably take all night for the six drives and multiple partitions each. I didn't think of this until just this moment... the usb external drives will probably take a long time . We'll see...

Anyway, I'm in heaven.

Thank you for your quick and very helpful responses. I'm very appreciative.

sbergstc

ps... does the forum work on how to modify a bios to force an update?

I wouldn't worry about a BIOS update unless it absolutely necessary. There is always a risk of "bricking" the motherboard.

Spinrite sometimes doesn't see all the drives and this can be exasperated if one of the drives is failing and takes a long time to initialize. A shutdown and reboot usually fixes it.

Yes it's sometimes hard to figure out which drive is which in the Spinrite menu - the best reference is by checking against the model and/or serial number which Spinrite will display.

Yes IDE is the same as PATA (IDE is the old school term and I'm very old school) but the only settings you have in BIOS that I can see are to enable or disable the PATA ports, not to change the emulation mode of the SATA ports (I have no idea what they mean by Enhanced mode). However it sounds like everything is working okay so I would leave it alone.

Yes the externals will take a while to scan, especially on level 4. It's really worth while to remove them from their enclosures if practical and connect them directly internally. Doesn't mean you have to mount the drive - just leave the cover off the PC, sit the drive on the desk or the floor next to it UPSIDE DOWN so there's no chance the circuit board on the bottom touches anything (or right side up sitting on an anti-static bag so the bag keeps the circuit board from touching anything (mouse pads are a bad idea - some contain recycled material that may be slightly conductive). The power and SATA cables are usually long enough and you can buy longer SATA cables and power extensions if need be.

If you plan on doing it regularly, as I do, you can buy and install a removable trayless drive bay which works great for SATA drives - you just slide the drive in and close the door. I use something like this (a different manufacturer but similar): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

I build all my own external drives by ordering an enclosure and drive separately, that way I can easily remove the drive from the enclosure, pop it in the drive bay in one of my bench PCs and let Spinrite do it's thing, and put it back in the enclosure.

As you may have noticed, store-bought external drives are pretty much sealed into their enclosures requiring you to usually damage the enclosure and void the warranty to remove the drive. By buying the drive and enclosure separately, the drive is still under warranty. I also find that modern external drives sacrifice cooling for style. I buy all-metal enclosures from Newegg that allow the drive to use the case as a heatsink. I like the Vantec metal enclosures - they are easy to open with just 2 screws, and for faster access you can leave the screws out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

It usually costs no more to make you own, and often less. I like to use WD Green drives because they run cooler and use less power.

I also have one PC with an IDE drive bay which is more awkward to use, but thankfully IDE is disappearing fast.

I also build enclosures for customers to make it easier to service them, unless it's a rush job and I have to go out and buy something ready-made.

I run Spinrite level 4 on any drive that seems to have slow access times, or definitely if I see the drive is reporting errors in the Windows event log. On my personal drives I scan the drives in my workstation and server PC once every 6 months or so at level 4 just to refresh the sectors and prevent problems, and the same for the externals if they have mission critical data on them.

If in the course of a scan you see a LOT of errors in the SMART status window in Spinrite (they will have red bars next to them to alert you) then you should consider that drive as very questionable. Modern drives actually have read errors all the time due to the density of the media, but the drive's internal error correction usually takes care of it. However there is a point where a worn out or defective drive will start exceeded the thresholds for errors that the drive can correct for, and that's when a drive should be questioned. Sometimes it's just weak sectors ("bit rot") and a Spinrite level 4 or just a Scandisk full scan will freshen it up, but sometimes it's an indication that the drive is mechanically wearing out and the heads are no longer able to accurately follow tracks anymore. If you do a level 4 on a drive, and then reboot and do a level 2 and you still see red error bars, then you can assume the drive is worn out.

I'll even run a level 2 on a new drive fresh from the factory just to make sure it's not defective (especially if it's going to be used in a mission critical situation). A good quality brand new drive should show few read errors if any. This is where you see the difference in cheap budget drives and quality drives: a cheap bargain bin drive will often show a lot of read/write errors. It may still be well within factory spec, but you get what you pay for, and that drive may not last as long. Usually these are drives with only a 1 year warranty.

Drives are cheap, and when in doubt, retire a questionable drive. I just keep them as data archives if it has a copy of important data, and throw them in the safe deposit box after copying the data to a new drive. Even though the drive may be flaky it's still readable and sitting in a cool dry safe deposit box that drive will be readable for a decade or two.

Also be aware that all drives are under warranty, and exchanging a defective drive (it's called an RMA) with a manufacturer is easy (go to the website, enter the model and serial, and they usually issue you an RMA authorization without having to talk to anyone). It costs around $10 to ship a drive via UPS and they pay return shipping. External drives often have lousy 1 year warranties because the manufacturer's know they don't hold up well. That's why I build my own enclosures and use good quality internal drives in them that have 3 or 5 year warranties.

And finally, since you almost got burned, re-think your data backup strategy. You should always have more than 1 copy of anything important. Drives are cheap, and so are off-site data backup services like Carbonite and Jungledisk. I had a tornado pass within 1000 feet of my house 3 years ago - no damage but that was a wakeup call. I realized that all my on-site backups would have been worthless so I started using Jungledisk as a redundant off-site backup, and I also make a DVD backup once a month of the most important data on the server and toss that in my safe deposit box.

Penguin, I take your advice to heart. I was lucky that I have a backup of the data on that disk, but it was 6 months old so a bit out of date but not dramatically so. I try to synchronize monthly, but obviously I've been a little lax. All my photos are backed up multiple times as they are irreplaceable. Of course, everything is in one place so I need to rethink that like you mention.

I'm wondering how much life is added to a drive by doing these maintenance scans? I've read various opinions as to the lifetime of a drive (without Spinrite I suppose). 2 of my drives are at least few years old, but if there are no problems noted in the Spinrite scans are they safe to continue using? I have more than enough storage so I may just "store" them for a bit until I need them, but I don't want to use them at all if I really shouldn't... like you say drives are cheap.

I've NEVER had to actually dispose of a drive... and I've managed to resolve any problems that came up, but I've only been using external drives for around 4 years.

After taking this WD apart I will probably follow your suggestions and purchase drives and enclosures separately... I have WD and Seagate drives. Are these typically high quality? I like the idea of the iStar USA product, but I don't have any bays available... I'll have to take a closer look at my tower and see if I can get rid of anything.

And just so I'm clear, with Spinrite, you run level 2 WHEN YOU'RE HAVING PROBLEMS and you run level 4 AS PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE.

I'm running level 4 scans, one after another, for a total of 6 drives (4 internally connected and 2 external - one of which is brand new). Will there be a screen/report at the end that will give me results for each drive?

Thanks again,
Sbergstc

IDE and SATA drives can be a mixed bag for reliability. I've had drives last over 5 years without any issues, then some less than a year. The drives that never caused me any issues are SCSI drives. I still have some that are over 10 years old and still work. I have one in an old rig that I built for my son back in the late 90's that has a 18gig SCSI and it still works. Its in my garage, and I use it as a trouble shooting tool. It runs typically every weekend.