Spinrite is a really nice data recovery/drive maintenance software from GRC. But it was made before the time when booting from USB drives became popular, or even possible. The manual even begins with “CREATE A CLEAN BOOT DISKETTE”, which should tell you just how old it is. That doesn’t mean it still isn’t useful but it would be really nice not to have to boot from a diskette or a CD/DVD.
To create a bootable USB drive you need to do the following:
- Download the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, we are going to use this tool to create the bootable USB drive.
- Download Windows 98 boot files. This will actually make Spinrite work more consistently than it does with the included FreeDOS since this is “real MS-DOS”.
- Insert your USB drive and start the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. The tool needs to be run with administrator privileges.
- Choose the following settings:
- Device: Your USB drive.
- Create a DOS startup disk: Check
- Using DOS system files located at: Browse to the location where you saved the Windows 98 boot files.
- The rest of the settings you can leave at their default.
- Then click
Start. - If you get the below error like I did then you probably have a drive that uses GPT instead of MBR.
- You can solve that by opening a command prompt. You can start a command prompt by hitting the Windows key -> type
cmd-> hit enter. - Enter the command
diskpart. - Run
list diskand find the number for the USB drive, 7 in my case.
- Run
select disk 7, switch the 7 to whatever number corresponds to your USB drive. - Run the command
clean. - Run the command
convert mbr. - Your USB drive should now work with the HP tool so go back to step 4 and try again.
- Open up the USB drive in Windows File Explorer and copy the
SpinRite.exefile into the root. The drive will probably look empty in File Explorer but don’t worry, it’s normal. - Now eject your USB drive and plug it into the computer where you want to run Spinrite.
- You might need to change some of your BIOS/EUFI settings in order to boot from the USB drive. How you do that will vary from motherboard to motherboard so I won’t go into how you do that. Instead you should consult the manual for your motherboard.
- When you have booted from the USB drive you should see a MS-DOS prompt. Type
spinriteand then press enter to start Spinrite.
Your are the only meaningful and Really work solution that Boot onto MS-DOS and NOT freedos.
Really a great help as I am a die hard MS-DOS fan when I am younger. There is no malware, or registry to care for. Only Directory for you to put your programs or into and also on floppy disk too. Hahaha I still remember in the middle of the game it ask “Please Insert Disk 2”. Don’t like the game then just delete the directory it reside. The Game is mostly Machine Code or Assembly Language and the file size is small and the game is fast not like npw where they dump in so many libraries whether they use it a not. Our PC become they dumping playground. Ok Thanks again and added bookmark.
Ok thats great. Now how about create a bat file or something that will run Spinrite automatically at boot?
Is that possible?
I followed these great tips and created the boot usb disk. Spinrite still won’t load from dos after I set up to boot from USB key. Please help! Using windows 10. Thanks.
So you do manage to boot into FreeDOS? Or how far do you get?
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, no longer works in win 10 everything is greyed out
Works fine for me, are you running it as an administrator (right click -> run as administrator)? Which version of Windows 10 are you using?
Worked for me too. I did have to run as Administrator.
good job, thanks brother…