G+_T Nohands Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Hey Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ and Bryan Burnett Can a Ras Pi be used to run SpinRite so I can do a deep scan on a 4 to 6 terabyte hard drive without giving up a machine that is used daily? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 T Nohands?? how would you hook up the drive? You can use a USB external enclosure but you lose some of spinrites potential when you add USB (unless I'm misremembering). And a raspberry pi will certainly be even slower than a standard desktop processor. Also Spinrite is written in x86 assembly, so you'd need to translate that to the Rasp Pi's ARM assembly. I have my doubts (though I've never looked) as to how feature-rich ARM is when it comes to reading drives. I'd lean towards using Spinrite in a Virtual Machine. That way you can still run your operating system as normal and you don't need to worry about hooking up a Raspberry Pi to a HDD..... Or multiple HDDs if you ever have the need!? That said, I'm curious to know if Rasp Pi is actually a feasible Spinrite buold! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 John Mink Would Spinrite work in a VM? I'd think it needs more direct access to the drive. Spinrite does work painfully slow over USB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joel Symons Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 I think Steve mentioned it running faster using virtualbox in some cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Brand Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Running on a Raspberry Pi won't work because the CPU architecture is ARM, not x86. A VM will work and I think I recall that Joel Symons is correct that it runs faster in some situations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 SpinRight does run faster in a VM, but mostly because it's not able to do all the error checking and correcting that it can when running natively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_John Mink Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Sad to hear VMs interfere with Spinrite, but I guess it's the price you pay? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 I was thinking a NUC might work, but it seems I remember something about conflicts with UEFI too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 Ah, here's an idea for a dedicated Spinrite box... I've seen laptops on Craigslist for <=$100 and you can get a SATA extension cable from Amazon for ~$5 (SMAKN 22-pin (7+15) Sata Male to Female Data and Power Combo Extension Cable - Slimline Sata Extension Cable M/f - 20inch (50cm) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L9R3AKA/). Spinrite can boot off USB and your disk to spinrite could he connected to SATA. Might take a bit to get the SATA cable connected inside the laptop, but easy to connect drives after that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Robert Lane Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 I've used spinrite with qemu/KVM on my Linux boxes with root privileges and it performed the same as the same machine with bare metal booting. This was also the only way at the time that I could run it on my '08 Macbook because of the EFI limitations. The one problem I always run into is USB enclosures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted July 5, 2015 Share Posted July 5, 2015 SpinRite only works with Intel and AMD-based systems. It won't run on a RasPi Buuut... nice idea... we should do a segment on that. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_T Nohands Posted July 5, 2015 Author Share Posted July 5, 2015 Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Padre is there anyway we can Lie about the Pi, maybe use a VM on a cluster config or would the VM fail to launch? What if we could exploit the USB vulnerability so the usb drive thinks it's a 64 gig computer with an amd/intel processor put it in a synology nas or plug a spare hard drive dock and usb drive in a usb hub plug the hub in to an ethernet converter use a roll over cable to run a remote desktop launch is there no way to fib to spinrite about what hardware it's really on? Surely with a black outfit white collar you should have a grey hat if not lie to SpinRite maybe Steve won't mind if you peek under the hood and do a little tinkering with his program also Father I put my faith in you discovering a way don't you have faith to? Think of it as a coding challenge just be kind if you succeed would you share with us.Wonder if this will keep you awake at night til you solve this one from 1 adhd to another lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ Posted July 5, 2015 Share Posted July 5, 2015 Nope -- SpinRite needs access to the bare hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_T Nohands Posted July 6, 2015 Author Share Posted July 6, 2015 Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ ah man totally crushin the ideas that would be priced fairly for a quad ah well maybe I can find a cheap unused LG775 system board any way I hope you got 1 good picture of that hot raspberry Pi I sent now that is both cool and pointless at the same time I got to get 1 but the whole can't run spinrite on it means I'll have to find another excuse :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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