Running Spinrite using VMware - USB Drive

Using Windows7 I am running VMWare 7 with a SpinRite.iso. I am trying to get it to work on a USB drive. I can see the drive in SpinRite but just as it starts to work on the drive I get this error:

"Operation on file "\\.\PhysicalDrive2" failed.
If the file resides on a remote file system, please make sure your network connection and the server where this disk resides are functioning properly. If the file resides on removable media, reattach the media."

Is this possible to achieve? How are you guys running SpinRite in a VM?

 

Hello ,

try a search, I'm sure someone must have tried it.

 

Hi M, it's ironic that you replied as I did find a thread on here where somebody had exactly the same problem and you replied to him saying how you got it working. I did try to reply to that thread but it was too old and the PM's aren't working on this board.

You said that you use Spinrite in a VMWare on all your drives bar C:, what OS are you using. If I know it's possible then I will search until I find the answer.
Cheers.

 

Hi,

usually x86-32 xpprosp3.

I'm not a great fan of Steve Gibson but he really is an excellent programmer. Spinrite operates on making a drive work well and has a data recovery although sometimes lengthy. It cannot fix physical damage - spinrite6vm

 

Is my problem Win7 x64? Do I have to use it on a XP x86? I can set up everything fine with Spinrite seeing the USB connected hard drive but just errors when I try to start the process.

 

Shouldn't be a problem no and spinrite runs on a dos clone.

Spinrite errors? application or disk? what do they say?

 

@ Wam7

Why don't you ask SG ?

 

@WAM7,

I understand that you are trying to run spinrite from inside Vmware and you are trying to run it on a physical drive, not the VMware's virtual drive. I believe the error you are getting is because the DOS interface of spinrite can not understand how to communicate with an external physical drive from inside a virtual environment.

You could run spinrite on your external drive from your actual physical computer instead.

A word of caution, spinrite on a usb drive will only be able to run max ~25 MB/s. It would take too long for a spinrite scan to run. It would be better (if possible) to remove the drive from the external enclosure and connect it directly to the computer instead.

I know this response is too late and you probably already have found a solution. Just thought I add my 2 cents.

 

Hi Raza0007, do you mean in general?..or wam7's drive?

Running spinrite how it is supposed to be used booting from your machine is of course prefered, but I understand why wam7 as I did want to use a vm.

hee, be prepared when running spinrite for along wait is usually the norm, anyone that has SP will know what I mean. Saying that my 250 and 500Gb drives are usually finished by morning.

To me its about playing, tweaking and hacking to find out what can be done safely. Using vms was a way of finding out wether I could still use the same machine, run multiple SP vms etc...to see if it could be done and if it could save me any time and resources.

 

Probably in general because Spinrite was released in 2004? or something and has not been updated since then. In those days VM were not common. So, Spinrite algorithm is probably just designed to boot your physical computer through a boot drive and run scan on connected physical drives.

However, when you boot from Spinrite inside a VM, it will probably see the VM's virtual disk as the physical disk and probably will not be able to see an external drive connected to the computer from inside a VM. This is the reason, in my opinion, why Wam7's was unable to run a scan on his external drive.

I have never tried to do the above on my external usb drives as I normally take the drive from the external enclosure and connect it directly to the computer before running spinrite to save scan time. Typical speed on usb 2.0 is only 25 MB/s, while even older IDE drives will give you around 80 MB/s plus when connected directly to the computer.