Need assistance with Spin Rite, virtual machines, and BIOS issues? Let me know how I can help!
Need assistance with Spin Rite, virtual machines, and BIOS issues? Let me know how I can help!
I own three 2TB WD RE4-GP Enterprise units. I wanted to run SpinRite inside VMs (one VM per drive link on the setup). Until then, I encountered this odd error (see https://twitter.com/capawesome9870/statu...5758298112). After searching, a suggestion popped up: use MSDOS instead of FreeDOS (which comes with the BIOS) and it didn’t resolve the issue. Further research revealed it wasn’t a FreeDOS problem but a BIOS-related one (see info link). Realizing this was about the BIOS, I updated my ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2 BIOS six times tonight—the latest version I had—and attempted testing past 30% of boot time. Still, the error persisted during direct MSDOS SpinRite USB launches and also with VMPlayer instead of VirtualBox. I wondered if VMs rely on their own BIOS/UEFI to talk to drives and the operating system. Was I mistaken? Did anyone else use SpinRite in a VM before? Has anyone faced this issue with SpinRite? What alternatives should I try next? I plan to test another PC tomorrow to see if the error appears again.
I attempted SpinRite on my second machine (9950 2.6GHz with Foxconn A79A-S, no BIOS update yet after purchase) and it still showed the same error.