Trouble running spinrite in vmware

Can someone help with this?

I am trying to setup a virtual machine for spinrite so that I don't have to boot from the cd every time i run it. I am able to load spinrite and configure my external hard drive as a physical drive which then makes it recognizable by spinrite, however, when i go to run spinrite on the drive it fails. The host machine is 32-bit windows vista ultimate.

 

Hi its a great idea to use Spinrite in a vm - I do this myself on every drive and partition except c: periodically.

You seem to have everything in hand in set up I presume by your post. What is meant by 'it fails' Spinrite doesn't recognise the drive?..or something else?

 

The drive is connected to the host via usb and is considered a physical disk in vmware. When I select the drive and hit enter to run spinrite, VMware tells me the following:

Operation on file "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" 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.
Choose Retry to attempt the operation again.
Choose Abort to terminate this session.
Choose Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system.

When I set up the spinrite vm I created it through custom > install OS later > Other > use physical disk *instead of virtual*.

I am sure I am missing something.

 

I used 'Typical' then you can either point to the Spinrite disc in your drive or choose the second option of using an iso created from Spinrite. You will then need to instruct which OS to use, I used 'other.' For the size I used 0.1. Then set up the usb drive by adding a hard disk and choosing to use a physical disk. As long as you've chose the right one you'll be good to go, you will also have the option of using the whole disk or partitions.

 

I just tried what you suggested and I received the same error as previously mentioned. It also returns the exact same error when i try to use it on an internal IDE drive.

 

Strange as the OS is usually installed on the first drive that being PhysicalDrive0, are you sure about your configuration?

 

physicaldrive0 is a 40gb storage drive. physicaldrive1 is a 500gb sata drive where my os is housed. When i try to access any of the physical drives 0-3 i get that error. What should my configuration be?

 

This might be why you are getting the 'failed' message in respect to physical disk access, (XP non-administrative and Vista.) Have you looked around the vmware communities forum.

 

I looked around and was not able to find any solution. I assume this works under XP or any linux variant.