Hi, I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from. I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech. Cheers, Barry. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible. There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium. First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors. On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Hi, Part of the problem is that you can't really get SMART info over USB. I have lots of things that aren't meant to be taken apart; most of them have met my screw driver at one point in time and are all more or less working. If you really don't want to take it apart, you could try using Seatools from Seagate; it works on non Seagate drives so you should be ok. Personally I'd just break the enclosure, plug the drive in directly to a motherboard, get much more accurate test results, buy a really cheap enclosure and chawk the money up as experience in taking an external apart. I sell hard drives on eBay and I used to test them over USB a few years ago, but you just can't get the info that you need to determin if somethings working or not. Apart from SMART a good example is speed; USB 2 is the bottlenec for spinning SATA II drives so if you were to run something like hddTune which gives you speed related info, you might be seeing a fairly constant 40MB or so read for the entire drive. Obviously you're seeing the USB effect here, but what you might not be seeing is a part of the drive that is noticeabley slower than other parts which would be a cause for concern. In your situation it just sounds like a bit of water damage which was shorting something; I've been experimenting with water damaged motherboards and usually the board won't power on for a while after the spill. Sometimes after its dried out it will work again; other times you'll need to brush all of the dirt off it / wash in distilled water and dry before it will work. You should probably be able to carry on using it making sure you have backups, but you should have backups anyway right? Cheers, Ben. On 3/21/12, Andrew Hodgson <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> wrote:

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

The smart over USB thing depends on the chipset used in the converter as you said. The cheap usb IDE / SATA converters that you can buy on eBay don't do this and its hit and miss if the converter in the external will do or not. Another problem is that some tools won't even try to get the SMART info if they see the drive is connected over USB, regardless of its available or not. Its also debatable if SMART will be able to show the sort of error you might experience after a drop; for example, if one of the heads is now week, SMART *may* only pick that up when its been used a lot and things like read error rate will start to skyrocket. On 3/22/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:

Barry,

Did Steve have anything interesting to say about sr's accessibility or did he just suggest using JFw? I've never used the product so I'm not sure how easily JFW could be integrated into SR's bootdisk? Personally, for us, I think a better option would probably be some sort of linux terminal app used from a live cd.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/22/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:

...

Hi,

Part of the problem is that you can't really get SMART info over USB. I have lots of things that aren't meant to be taken apart; most of them have met my screw driver at one point in time and are all more or less working. If you really don't want to take it apart, you could try using Seatools from Seagate; it works on non Seagate drives so you should be ok. Personally I'd just break the enclosure, plug the drive in directly to a motherboard, get much more accurate test results, buy a really cheap enclosure and chawk the money up as experience in taking an external apart. I sell hard drives on eBay and I used to test them over USB a few years ago, but you just can't get the info that you need to determin if somethings working or not. Apart from SMART a good example is speed; USB 2 is the bottlenec for spinning SATA II drives so if you were to run something like hddTune which gives you speed related info, you might be seeing a fairly constant 40MB or so read for the entire drive. Obviously you're seeing the USB effect here, but what you might not be seeing is a part of the drive that is noticeabley slower than other parts which would be a cause for concern.

In your situation it just sounds like a bit of water damage which was shorting something; I've been experimenting with water damaged motherboards and usually the board won't power on for a while after the spill. Sometimes after its dried out it will work again; other times you'll need to brush all of the dirt off it / wash in distilled water and dry before it will work.

You should probably be able to carry on using it making sure you have backups, but you should have backups anyway right?

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/21/12, Andrew Hodgson <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> wrote:

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Barry, Did Steve have anything interesting to say about sr's accessibility or did he just suggest using JFw? I've never used the product so I'm not sure how easily JFW could be integrated into SR's bootdisk? Personally, for us, I think a better option would probably be some sort of linux terminal app used from a live cd. Cheers, Ben. On 3/22/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:

Hi,

Part of the problem is that you can't really get SMART info over USB. I have lots of things that aren't meant to be taken apart; most of them have met my screw driver at one point in time and are all more or less working. If you really don't want to take it apart, you could try using Seatools from Seagate; it works on non Seagate drives so you should be ok. Personally I'd just break the enclosure, plug the drive in directly to a motherboard, get much more accurate test results, buy a really cheap enclosure and chawk the money up as experience in taking an external apart. I sell hard drives on eBay and I used to test them over USB a few years ago, but you just can't get the info that you need to determin if somethings working or not. Apart from SMART a good example is speed; USB 2 is the bottlenec for spinning SATA II drives so if you were to run something like hddTune which gives you speed related info, you might be seeing a fairly constant 40MB or so read for the entire drive. Obviously you're seeing the USB effect here, but what you might not be seeing is a part of the drive that is noticeabley slower than other parts which would be a cause for concern.

In your situation it just sounds like a bit of water damage which was shorting something; I've been experimenting with water damaged motherboards and usually the board won't power on for a while after the spill. Sometimes after its dried out it will work again; other times you'll need to brush all of the dirt off it / wash in distilled water and dry before it will work.

You should probably be able to carry on using it making sure you have backups, but you should have backups anyway right?

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/21/12, Andrew Hodgson <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> wrote:

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Hello everyone, My thanks to all who offered suggestions. I was unable to complete a chkdsk /f /r. I got in stage 2 I believe index issues, stage 3 orphan file recovery, but in stage 4 filesystem check it never got off zero percent, half an hour in to it the drive started grinding and clicking most unpleasantly. I'm assuming this thing took physical damage in the fall. In answer no I don't have a backup, this drive was my largest I don't have anything bigger to back it up. Recommendations appreciated. Thanks. Dave. On 3/21/12, Brent Harding <brent@hostany.net> wrote:

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer

bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now

very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

From the sounds of things, I'm guessing that might not be the case,

Well, here's the thing. When you're dealing w/an USB hdd, you're actually dealing w/2 components--the USB case & accompanying circuitry, & then the hdd itself, & its circuitry. Sometimes it's just the USB circuitry that's toast, so taking the hdd out & mounting it either internally or via another new USB enclosure can sometimes put things completely back to rights. though--nonetheless, it's definitively worth a try. If u can find an identical logic board to the 1 u have, that might also be worth replacing. I am more than a bit leery, though, of the sounds you're hearing, because, if the drive itself is actually physically damaged, running it could very well increase that. The optimum is to have the drive repaired in a clean room; that likely is not affordable. Man--I was tryin' to remember the program I saw some months back that said it rabbited thru the drive, recovering whatever it could very rapidly, but I just cannot remember it now. Aging ram. Pi$$e$ me off! On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

My thanks to all who offered suggestions. I was unable to complete a chkdsk /f /r. I got in stage 2 I believe index issues, stage 3 orphan file recovery, but in stage 4 filesystem check it never got off zero percent, half an hour in to it the drive started grinding and clicking most unpleasantly. I'm assuming this thing took physical damage in the fall.

In answer no I don't have a backup, this drive was my largest I don't have anything bigger to back it up.

Recommendations appreciated. Thanks. Dave.

On 3/21/12, Brent Harding <brent@hostany.net> wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer

bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now

very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

Yep sounds like a head issue then? I know dr people will sometimes try to image the disk before its too late in these situations, although its debatable if the image would ever complete on this drive. If you don't need everything, probably just copy off what you want, but if everything is equally as important then try drive image xml or something. Given drive prices at the moment, try to track down a 2TB USB 3 external and just rip it apart - the Hitachi ones are good for this and it will be much cheaper than buying the exact same 2TB 7200 drive on its own. The reason why you should go for USB 3 is that with USB 2 you can get some strange drives in the enclosures - e.g. drives that aren't quite up to spec which doesn't matter when their behind the USB bottlenec. With USB 3 its much harder for companies to get away with shoving a 5400RPM that probably doesn't even perform that well inside an enclosure because of peoples speed expectations. Remember the golden rule of data recovery though; if the data's important, just pay a pro to do it. Cheers, Ben. On 3/22/12, Kerry Hoath <kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Kerry, How easy is it to tell if a scan has completed? Perhaps a batch could be written that starts a job and then once its complete starts beeping? Its worth remembering though that most of the drive manifacturers have windows diagnostic tools which are usable; the only exception that I can think of off the top of my head is Samsung. Cheers, Ben. On 3/22/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:

Yep sounds like a head issue then? I know dr people will sometimes try to image the disk before its too late in these situations, although its debatable if the image would ever complete on this drive. If you don't need everything, probably just copy off what you want, but if everything is equally as important then try drive image xml or something. Given drive prices at the moment, try to track down a 2TB USB 3 external and just rip it apart - the Hitachi ones are good for this and it will be much cheaper than buying the exact same 2TB 7200 drive on its own. The reason why you should go for USB 3 is that with USB 2 you can get some strange drives in the enclosures - e.g. drives that aren't quite up to spec which doesn't matter when their behind the USB bottlenec. With USB 3 its much harder for companies to get away with shoving a 5400RPM that probably doesn't even perform that well inside an enclosure because of peoples speed expectations.

Remember the golden rule of data recovery though; if the data's important, just pay a pro to do it.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/22/12, Kerry Hoath <kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Kerry, How easy is it to tell if a scan has completed? Perhaps a batch could be written that starts a job and then once its complete starts beeping? Its worth remembering though that most of the drive manifacturers have windows diagnostic tools which are usable; the only exception that I can think of off the top of my head is Samsung. Cheers, Ben. On 3/22/12, Ben Mustill-Rose <ben@benmr.com> wrote:

Yep sounds like a head issue then? I know dr people will sometimes try to image the disk before its too late in these situations, although its debatable if the image would ever complete on this drive. If you don't need everything, probably just copy off what you want, but if everything is equally as important then try drive image xml or something. Given drive prices at the moment, try to track down a 2TB USB 3 external and just rip it apart - the Hitachi ones are good for this and it will be much cheaper than buying the exact same 2TB 7200 drive on its own. The reason why you should go for USB 3 is that with USB 2 you can get some strange drives in the enclosures - e.g. drives that aren't quite up to spec which doesn't matter when their behind the USB bottlenec. With USB 3 its much harder for companies to get away with shoving a 5400RPM that probably doesn't even perform that well inside an enclosure because of peoples speed expectations.

Remember the golden rule of data recovery though; if the data's important, just pay a pro to do it.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/22/12, Kerry Hoath <kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list" <blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

You don't test USB drives with spinrite. If you do it is a read/write only with no smart passthrough. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Does it include optical drives when it numbers the drives? Seems like the best way forward would be to have a dedicated sr machine with no hard drives in it other than the test drive so you always know which number to use. I'm going to be building a hard drive testing machine over easter; hoping to be able to test 12 drives at a time compared to having multiple machines on and only being able to do 5 or 6 between them. Going to be connecting all the drives to the board directly or through controler cards and testing them within windows taking advantage of windows 7's hotswap feature. All the testing / formatting will be done under windows; it should all work well. Cheers, Ben. On 3/23/12, Kerry Hoath <kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

Sorry I forgot to mention you use drive 0 1 2 3 4 5 etc. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

No it is drives enumerated by the BIOS so it is numbered from 0 which starts at bios drive 0x80 and up. first bios hard drive drive 0 second bios drive 1 and so on Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 9:35 AM, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:

Does it include optical drives when it numbers the drives? Seems like the best way forward would be to have a dedicated sr machine with no hard drives in it other than the test drive so you always know which number to use. I'm going to be building a hard drive testing machine over easter; hoping to be able to test 12 drives at a time compared to having multiple machines on and only being able to do 5 or 6 between them. Going to be connecting all the drives to the board directly or through controler cards and testing them within windows taking advantage of windows 7's hotswap feature. All the testing / formatting will be done under windows; it should all work well.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/23/12, Kerry Hoath<kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

Sorry I forgot to mention you use drive 0 1 2 3 4 5 etc. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Sure; I'll write a log for it or something and I'll make sure that people hear what a machine with 12 hard drives connected to it sounds like. Cheers, Ben. On 3/23/12, Barry Toner <barry@barry-toner.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,

Ben would you fancy documenting your hard drive testing machine? Poss sticking it up as a podcast or on blindsysadmin.com?

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 23 March 2012 02:37 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

No it is drives enumerated by the BIOS so it is numbered from 0 which starts at bios drive 0x80 and up.

first bios hard drive drive 0 second bios drive 1 and so on

Regards, Kerry.

On 23/03/2012 9:35 AM, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:

...

Does it include optical drives when it numbers the drives? Seems like the best way forward would be to have a dedicated sr machine with no hard drives in it other than the test drive so you always know which number to use. I'm going to be building a hard drive testing machine over easter; hoping to be able to test 12 drives at a time compared to having multiple machines on and only being able to do 5 or 6 between them. Going to be connecting all the drives to the board directly or through controler cards and testing them within windows taking advantage of windows 7's hotswap feature. All the testing / formatting will be done under windows; it should all work well.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/23/12, Kerry Hoath<kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

Sorry I forgot to mention you use drive 0 1 2 3 4 5 etc. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, > > I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on > usb-attached external drives. > > I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an > enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's > sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit > a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show > up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected > everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing > damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not > making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what > others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is > anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which > one can be recommended? > > Thanks. > Dave. > > _______________________________________________ > Blind-sysadmins mailing list > Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org > http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins > > > -- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Hey, Excellent! Looking forward to that. Sounds like a fun project. Cheers, Barry. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Ben Mustill-Rose Sent: 23 March 2012 18:18 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive Sure; I'll write a log for it or something and I'll make sure that people hear what a machine with 12 hard drives connected to it sounds like. Cheers, Ben. On 3/23/12, Barry Toner <barry@barry-toner.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,

Ben would you fancy documenting your hard drive testing machine? Poss sticking it up as a podcast or on blindsysadmin.com?

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 23 March 2012 02:37 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

No it is drives enumerated by the BIOS so it is numbered from 0 which starts at bios drive 0x80 and up.

first bios hard drive drive 0 second bios drive 1 and so on

Regards, Kerry.

On 23/03/2012 9:35 AM, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:

...

Does it include optical drives when it numbers the drives? Seems like the best way forward would be to have a dedicated sr machine with no hard drives in it other than the test drive so you always know which number to use. I'm going to be building a hard drive testing machine over easter; hoping to be able to test 12 drives at a time compared to having multiple machines on and only being able to do 5 or 6 between them. Going to be connecting all the drives to the board directly or through controler cards and testing them within windows taking advantage of windows 7's hotswap feature. All the testing / formatting will be done under windows; it should all work well.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/23/12, Kerry Hoath<kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

Sorry I forgot to mention you use drive 0 1 2 3 4 5 etc. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, > > I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on > usb-attached external drives. > > I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an > enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's > sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit > a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show > up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected > everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing > damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not > making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what > others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is > anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which > one can be recommended? > > Thanks. > Dave. > > _______________________________________________ > Blind-sysadmins mailing list > Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org > http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins > > > -- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Hi, Ben would you fancy documenting your hard drive testing machine? Poss sticking it up as a podcast or on blindsysadmin.com? Cheers, Barry. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 23 March 2012 02:37 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive No it is drives enumerated by the BIOS so it is numbered from 0 which starts at bios drive 0x80 and up. first bios hard drive drive 0 second bios drive 1 and so on Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 9:35 AM, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:

Does it include optical drives when it numbers the drives? Seems like the best way forward would be to have a dedicated sr machine with no hard drives in it other than the test drive so you always know which number to use. I'm going to be building a hard drive testing machine over easter; hoping to be able to test 12 drives at a time compared to having multiple machines on and only being able to do 5 or 6 between them. Going to be connecting all the drives to the board directly or through controler cards and testing them within windows taking advantage of windows 7's hotswap feature. All the testing / formatting will be done under windows; it should all work well.

Cheers, Ben.

On 3/23/12, Kerry Hoath<kerry@ciscovision.org> wrote:

...

Sorry I forgot to mention you use drive 0 1 2 3 4 5 etc. Regards, Kerry. On 23/03/2012 3:02 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:

...

Hi,

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it had command line options but should have known better.

When specifying a USB drive which may not have a drive letter (Linux or other volume), what is the syntax to use then? I will play round with this more anyhow.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Kerry Hoath Sent: 22 March 2012 05:46 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

You don't technically need to access the interface of spinrite. Here is what Idid:

Made my own boot disk with spinrite's executable on it media needs to be writable so a floppy or thumbdrive. boot to dos. spinrite auto drive 0 level 4 exit

Then read the log when done.

Docs contain all the command-line options.

Regards, Kerry. On 22/03/2012 10:31 AM, Brent Harding wrote:

...

That's what I was going to say. Steve brought up the idea on a question of accessibility of the program on Security Now and said people have done it, but the little I used DOS in DOS without Windows on top of it, the hardware synths supported by any of them might be hard to come by.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hodgson" <andrew@hodgsonfamily.org> To: "Blind sysadmins list"<blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 6:25 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

...

Hi,

I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Hi,

I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from.

I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech.

Cheers, Barry.

-----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive

Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible.

There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium.

First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f& /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors.

On 3/21/12, David Mehler<dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself& occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

Hi, I used to run Spinrite a lot from a Windows boot disk running Hal Lite with a Juno speech synth and it worked fine. The issue we have now is no support for software synths under DOS, which is what Spinrite runs under. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Barry Toner Sent: 21 March 2012 23:11 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive Hi, I have some private messeges with Steve Gibson and he said that it's just DOS that SR runs in. He reckoned JFW for DOS should load. Though it could have been Free DOS he meant, in which case I'm not sure if a Screen Reader can be ran from. I'd certainly be interested in any SR walkthroughs, with or without speech. Cheers, Barry. -----Original Message----- From: blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Jackie McBride Sent: 21 March 2012 23:03 To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] testing an external drive Spinrite can test USB drives if your bios is set to support it. Most newer bioses do now, but the name of the setting differs. However, spinrite, from my experience, at least, wasn't accessible. There are lots of smart monitoring/diagnostic utils out there. I can't remember which 1 I've used--it's been awhile. Google's your best friend, in case some1 on list can't provide more info--I'm actually headed out now very quickly so time is at a premium. First thing I think I'd do is a chkdsk on that drive using the /f & /r options to fix any file system errors/bad sectors. On 3/21/12, David Mehler <dave.mehler@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I know about spinrite, but I didn't think that worked on usb-attached external drives.

I've got a terabyte external drive connected by usb, it's an enclosure, but not removable, i.e. the drive came in it and it's sealed not meant to be replaced. This enclosure took a spill and hit a carpeted ground apartment say maybe four feet and it didn't show up for a while. I recycled it, disconnected and reconnected everything, and it shows up but it took what looks like casing damage and I'm hoping it didn't take internal damage, it's not making any noises and it is showing up again, I'd like to know what others use to test their external drives? Also on the subject, is anyone using the network-attached terabyte or greater drive? Which one can be recommended?

Thanks. Dave.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

-- Blame the computer--why not? It can't defend itself & occasionally might even be the culprit Jackie McBride Ask Me Computer Questions at: www.pcinquirer.com Jaws Scripting training materials: www.screenreaderscripting.com homePage: www.abletec.serverheaven.net _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins