I've seen several posts herein related to Spinrite. I have a new laptop (the third in a row because the prior two were defective). At day 28 the HDD died on the new one - an ongoing theme. I connected the SATA HDD from the laptop to the main server, and can see it fine. When I boot from the Spinrite CD it does not seem to see ANY of the SATA drives. I have turned RAID off (which it was) but cannot access anything but the CD and the RAMDRIVE.
I have tried UBCD4Win, but Spinrite won't run in that Windows environment. I have tried PEBuilder, and the same result. I have created the Spinrite CD ISO, but that cannot see the SATA drives, just the CD and RAMDRIVE.
How can I build a bootable CD that will load a version of DOS that can see and access the USB ports and the SATA drives? My system is:
GigaByte EP45T Extreme MB
2x2GB Corsair Dominators
ATI Radeon HD 4800
3 SATA II HDD drives
1 SATA drive from the laptop (2.5")
1 IDE NEC optical drive
1 SATA Plextor 850SA Optical drive
Windows XP PRO SP3
NTFS file system, no RAID used
The Purpose? I am trying to recover this BRAND NEW and already defective drive, and use Spinrite to save it long enough to image the drive using Macrium Reflect and install it on a new drive. If you have a better thought ... I'm certainly open to it.
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if its brand new, you should utilize your warranty on the harddrive.
as far as spinrite goes, i had the same issues. upgraded to the latest version and it's working like normal.
in the bios there should be a setting called sata operation...you might want to try setting that to "combination" mode or whatever its called on your machine. for dell's its called combination, some it's IDE.
if that doesnt work...get a usb cd rom and boot to that.
Thanks guys!
The only problem with the USB solution is that the Seagate tools do not work on a USB external drive. I can still use the USB option for Spinrite though. I was hoping someone could suggest a way to build or download a true DOS disk that would see the SATA drives - enabling legacy IDE mode in the BIOS seems to have no effect. Any other thoughts?
you can use winPE to do this. it has options to inject sata, raid, scsi drivers into the image. and you can do everything from there. its a pretty neat tool.
http://technet.microsoft.c
You didn't mention Seagate tools, and in my experience with the Seagate tools, if the drive is NOT a seagate drive, they won't work. But maybe I'm remembering those details wrong.
Partition Magic would be my suggestion for copying partitions around, and it can handle a SATA drive that is presented to it as an external USB drive. It also isn't locked into some brand name like the Seagate tools are/or were. PM runs in both DOS and Windows.
To address acouple of things in the feedback. This is a Seagate drive, and it is new, and I already have the warranty replacement. I spent a LOT of time installing everything to the new computer and don't have the time to do it again. I want to salvage an image, if possible, to image the replacement drive which is also a Seagate.
I have PM8 but when I boot I cannot see the drives in SATA or in USB. I seem only able to access the CDROM and RAM drive. I can get every other part of my process plan to work, EXCEPT booting into DOS and running Spinrite on the drive. I have connected it to a SATA connector and a USB connector, but cannot see either upon boot up, and I must boot into a DOS mode, not a Windows shell for Spinrite to work. Right now PM8 jusr sees the drive as "BAD" in Windows and won't give me the options to do anything with it, so I need to see if Spinrite can give me back some options. I CAN see the drive and access it in Windows when it connected by USB or SATA, so the data is there, though PM8 says the drive has ZERO space used.
It may be a hopelessly failed drive. You might have to recreate everything from scratch.
You could download GetDataBack from http://www.runtime.org/dat
It will run and give you good information about how bad the drive is, and if anything can be recovered. They don't ask for money unless you see something you like, and want to pay them to help you recover it. Otherwise, it's worth seeing what is on the drive that can be recovered. Use it as a diagnostic tool.
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by: JT92677Posted on 2009-07-31 at 06:49:44ID: 24988740
USB support in "legacy" or DOS mode is often a setting in the BIOS. If it's ON, it can interfere with some USB drives that have a "sleep" mode, so the recommended setting is Legacy support "OFF" and let Windows handle the USB ports.
BUT, in your case, look for USB support in BIOS and be sure it's ON.
Next, I have found that instead of trying to deal with SATA drives with a SATA controller, why not use a SATA to USB device and deal with the drive as an external USB device.
Take a look at this device:
http://www.geeks.com/detai
There are others with a separate power supply and cable that connect to the SATA drive and provide a USB interface, but they're about $12, and this new item from Geeks is only about $10 more.
I think trying to get to SATA directly from DOS may not be worth the effort when there are simpler approaches like SATA to USB, and then running Spinrite.
Just a thought, hope this helps.
Jeff