Is there a way to prevent Windows from taking control of a hard drive?

Is there a way to prevent Windows from taking control of a hard drive?

I own a copy of SpinRite, a hard drive recovery and maintenance utility, that can't run under Windows because it requires such low-level access to the drive. Typically, you create a boot disc that runs SpinRite on top of FreeDOS in order to scan your drives. This means the computer is out of commission for that time. Unfortunately, theses scans can take anyware from several hours to several days depending on the size and condition of the drive and the level at which you run SpinRite.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 258

Total answers/comments: 4

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Guest [Entry]

"Use the disk management console to unmount the volumes on the drive.

Within disk management, right click on all partitions on the target drive, select the drive letter, and click ""remove"".

This will unmount the volume(s) and should allow your tools to have full access."

Guest [Entry]

This is mostly speculation, but have you tried disabling the volume (but not the whole device) in device manager?

Guest [Entry]

Use the LockDismount utility referred to in this boot-land.net post to temporarily unmount the drive from the Windows volume manager.

Guest [Entry]

This is a very old posting. Did you check the boot information/order in the CMOS setup? Is it possible that the boot sector of your locked drive was used during boot, then further loading passed to the Windows disk? This would make it look like the drive was not in use, but still lock the drive because it was used for boot. If so, try shuffling your hard disks and the boot order so your locked drive isn't used.