PCA Forums

Posted: **Wed Dec 28, 2016 8:51 pm**

Anyone have any luck on using SpinRite on drives that are larger than 640 gigs? I have my gaming drive, ad 1TB Seagate that crapped out today when the power was shut off and turned back on within 2 seconds. At the time, I had Steam opened on the desktop, which is installed on this drive. My C drive was not affected. All my games are on my D drive.

While googling around, some suggested using MSDOS instead of free DOS, but most said that also did not work. I also changed the SATA mode to IDE from AHCI and that had no affect, except for providing me with SMART info. The drive was properly detected by SpinRite.

Posted: **Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:41 pm**

I ONLY use MS-DOS. I create MS-DOS bootable flash drives and copy Spinrite to it. I can usually do drives up to 1TB, but yeah depending on your mobo's BIOS is may have issues. I have an old Q6600 system I use just for Spinrite that seems to behave pretty well with large drives.

But until Steve releases the next update, we're kind of stuck.

You could try it via a USB dock which might avoid the error but will also be slow as molasses.

Posted: **Thu Dec 29, 2016 1:43 am**

What version of MS DOS? I was able to download an ISO of 6.22 from: http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

Posted: **Thu Dec 29, 2016 8:59 am**

Easiest way to do this is to use RUFUS: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Download the portable version. It easily makes bootable flash drives with MS-DOS or Free-DOS. It has Free-DOS built in, but for legal reasons it needs to copy the MS-DOS files from your Windows OS. HOWEVER Win10 no longer has the DOS files included, so you need to do this from a version of Windows prior to Win10.

Just run it on an XP/Win7/Win8 system and you'll get the drop down box for MS-DOS in RUFUS. It just takes a few seconds to make the flash drive.

After making the flash drive just copy the SPINRITE.EXE file to it. Boot the flash drive and type SPINRITE at the DOS prompt to run it.

PRO TIP: Spinrite has a command line which gives you the ability to control how many retries Spinrite uses when trying to recover a bad sector. This is the process that takes the longest on a really bad drive when it sits there and runs Dynastat to actually retry 2000 times to read an unreadable sector by using different tricks, and if it succeeds the sector is marked as recovered and if it fails it's marked unrecoverable.

Sometimes I just need to pull client data off a drive and don't really want it to spend a couple of days (and a lot of wear and tear on an already worn drive that's nearly at the point of total failure) and I don't need it to work so hard to recover every single sector.

To completely disable Dynastat (which will speed up the process as it will only replace bad sectors and not try to recover data) run Spinrite with the commandline DYNASTAT 0:

SPINRITE DYNASTAT <number>

Use a number from 1 - 100 to control how aggressively Spinrite tries to recover a sector (the number is a percentage of aggressiveness). 100 = a full 2000 retries. 1 = 20 retries. 0 = no retries.

Posted: **Thu Dec 29, 2016 9:37 am**

BTW it sounds like you have a corrupt file system, so after running Spinrite on the drive, be sure to run a CHKDSK /F on it.

Posted: **Thu Dec 29, 2016 1:01 pm**

Drive is toast. If I connect it using USB, it takes the OS a very long time to finally get to the desktop. Disconnected, it boots in less than 10 seconds (I have a SSD as the boot drive running windows 8.1).

I was able to create a boot CD using win98se, but it crapped out at exactly the same spot. I already have my backup drive in there. It was being updated by using Allwaysync. I did have a write issue when it was replaces with this backup drive. I had to go into the security tab and make it readable and writable. Steam would not update or download without doing that.

So this brings me to my next question: this is a game drive with mostly Steam on it, but I do have a music folder. I was using Allwaysync, but maybe I should be using Acronis instead. The problem with Steam is it has a bazillion files for each game.

Posted: **Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:34 pm**

Yeah, you could get a really big external drive - big enough at least to hold two images - and just image or backup the whole drive with Acronis, deleting the oldest backup each time.

Posted: **Fri Dec 30, 2016 7:38 pm**

I installed windows 98se on a VM and created a boot disk. I then copied over the spinrite.exe file over to the floppy (yes a floppy). I booted off the floppy via usb, but spinrite crapped out at the same spot. I even moved it over a few percentage from where it crapped out, and it stopped working again with the same error message. I then tried the DOS Seagate tool, and it also hung using the advance check.

So I"m just going to take apart the drive to destroy it.

Also, I'm in the process of creating a Acronis image of the backup drive I'm now using, but it takes almost 3 hours to complete a backup via USB3. I guess the better method would be to install a removable drive in a tray that I can remove so it does not run all the time.

Posted: **Fri Dec 30, 2016 9:31 pm**

Is that a backup or an image? An image shouldn't take 3 hours. Backup may take a while because of all the individual files, but an image of a drive to a USB 3.0 drive? If it's a full Terrabyte of data, MAYBE an hour at the most. Probably less.

I

Posted: **Fri Dec 30, 2016 11:06 pm**

It took 2 hours for the backup as an image, at least I thought it was creating an image. A huge file - over 500 gigs in size.

Posted: **Sat Dec 31, 2016 8:40 am**

Images will generally be 50% the size of the data due to compression. Problem is that game files are often already compressed and thus incompressible.

I stopped backing up my whole Steam folder - it just wasn't worth it. Instead I just backup the folders for individual games that are important to me. With high speed internet it's really no big deal to re-download a game if necessary.

Posted: **Sat Dec 31, 2016 11:28 am**

So do you use the Steam backup tool?

Well, I guess there is an issue with the Steam backup tool:

Important:
Backups for Valve games created with this feature will not include saved games, custom multiplayer maps or configuration files. To backup your entire installation (including custom content), ensure that copies of all custom files are in the following folders in the path: C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\common\<game name>\ :

/cfg/ - Custom configurations and configuration scripts
/downloads/ - Custom content for multiplayer games
/maps/ - Custom maps which have been installed or downloaded during multiplayer games
/materials/ - Custom textures and skins
/SAVE/ - Single-player saved games

I did get an email from GRC:

This error is not an indication of a specific problem. However, there are some steps to take to try to resolve the issue.

First step . . .

Unfortunately, FreeDOS may be having a problem on your system/drive.

So, you will need to create a MS-DOS boot diskette instead.

If you have a floppy drive (if not skip down to make a CD or further down to make a USB key) . . . from within WinXP you insert a blank
(or erasable) floppy diskette into the A: drive, you can then right-click on the A: drive in explorer and choose format. In the
format dialog box there should be an option to "Make Disk Bootable" or possibly "Create MS-DOS Boot Disk". Choose the option you see and you will then have a bootable DOS diskette.

Once created, copy the SPINRITE.EXE file you already have. Then after you boot clean and get to the A: prompt, type spinrite to start the program manually.

Making a boot CD . . .

If you have a CD-R drive, you can get an ISO image of a "Windows 98
SE Boot CD" here . . .

<http://www.19systems.net/Win98SEnoram_bootdisk.iso>

Once created, boot with the above CD and then once at the DOS prompt put in the SpinRite CD and type spinrite at the DOS prompt to
start SpinRite manually.

The A: prompt is a pseudo prompt. During the boot process, just above the A: prompt, there is probably a listing for the CD-ROM
drives. Which ever letter it shows (in my case it shows F:), that is the drive you need to switch to first, then put in the SpinRite CD
and type SpinRite at that prompt.

Making a boot USB key . . .

We have seen mixed success with USB drive booting. Only some flash drives seem to support it correctly and only some motherboards.

If your system can boot a USB device, here is some basic instructions for making a bootable USB key.

There is a free utility called Rufus <https://rufus.akeo.ie/>, that is very easy to use.

Also, HP makes an easy to use utility called HP USB Disk Format Tool, which includes a "Create a DOS Startup Disk" option. It's available
for free download at <http://www.19systems.net/HP-USB-Tool-v2.1.8.exe> along with the Windows 98/DOS boot files <http://www.19systems.net/Win98-Boot-Files.zip>.

You can use the HP tool and point it at a directory where you unzip the DOS boot files and it automatically builds a bootable DOS USB key
using those files. Then, copy the SPINRITE.EXE file to that device. Once done, reboot the system and at the DOS prompt, type spinrite to start SpinRite.

A quick search also found these sites . . .

<http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/>

<http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm>

<http://www.megaleecher.net/Make_Bootable_USB>

<http://www.diy-computer-repair.com/bootable-usb.html>

Thank you for your cooperation, time and patience.

Sincerely,

Greg McIntyre
Gibson Research
Technical Support

and a followup email from them:

There is no time line on the next version of SpinRite.

Last things to try . . .

Many BIOSes have a setting to limit the speed of modern drives for backwards compatibility reasons. So you should poke around your
system's BIOS screens to see whether your drive settings are all set to "AUTO" and/or the appropriate drive speed.

One other solution may be to move the drive to a different system. Relocating this drive to a different system or perhaps just
to a different controller in the same system and running SpinRite may resolve the issue. Once done, the drive could be returned to
original system or controller for normal use.

If that is not possible, we would suggest would be to make sure that the hardware (motherboard, drive controllers, etc.) in your system is
using the latest BIOS or firmware version.

Finally, you might try is to see if the drive manufacturer has their own proprietary software to test/check their drives. We have seen
some cases where the manufacturers own software can force the drive to repair itself . . . in which case then SpinRite would be able to
keep the drive maintained, etc.

Lastly, GRC and Steve have Twitter accounts and Blogs that can be easily subscribed to in order to receive periodic news and
updates. Please see our <http://grc.com/news.htm> page for all the details.

Thank you for your cooperation, time and patience.

Sincerely,

Greg McIntyre
Gibson Research
Technical Support

Posted: **Sat Dec 31, 2016 4:09 pm**

I never use the tool. I just make a copy of each game's folder. Saved games are either in there or in your documents folder.

You can right click on a game in the Steam library, and there's an option in there that shows the location of the game's folder, which is usually under the Steam folder unless you chose an alternative.

You can also keep using Allway Sync as long as you have a drive the same size or bigger to sync to.

Not changes in the game folders so once you've done the initial sync, the subsequent ones take little time just to sync changes.

Posted: **Sat Dec 31, 2016 5:00 pm**

Yeah I think I'm going back to using Allways Sync instead of Acronis for this drive. Once I have all the files copied, using Always Sync takes 30 minutes or less. One important option is to have the deleted files from the backup drive deleted automatically; otherwise, it will fill up your recycling bin. This is true if you have a Steam folder with games.

If you don't want to keep the deleted files in the Recycle Bin, use a menu item Job --> Properties, switch to the "File Versioning Policy" section and set versioning of deleted files to "Remove permanently".

Best regards,
Justy
Allway Sync Team

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