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delta67

Member

Registered: 2016-03-26

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

Hi all.

This is my first post in the forum. Since English is not my mother language, if I did not describe something clearly just let me know and I will try my best again. Much thanks.

I am trying to rescue a portable hard drive but right now I cannot figure out what happened to it. Previously I know this disk has some connection problems but it was not so serious, and I can still mount the disk after serveral times pluging. and unpluging.

But right now it seems it is totally down. When connected via USB port it sounds like it only spins less than 1 sec. Then I heard a snap and it stops. This repeats 3 times then it is totally silent. I guess it may be caused by not sufficient power so I've tried another port and it behaves like spin, snap, spin, snap without an end.

When tried with lsblk, it shows a raw disk without partitions. I dissected the wrapper and saw the hard drive is marked 500GB, but it is recognized as 2TB in lsblk. I cannot remember how large it should be when it still worked sorry.

What I have tested so far are:
hdparm:

 delta67@Pollux  ~  sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Standards:
	Likely used: 5
Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	0	0
	heads		0	0
	sectors/track	0	0
	--
	Logical/Physical Sector size:           512 bytes
	device size with M = 1024*1024:           0 MBytes
	device size with M = 1000*1000:           0 MBytes 
	cache/buffer size  = unknown
Capabilities:
	IORDY(may be)(cannot be disabled)
	Standby timer values: spec'd by Vendor
	R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 0	Current = ?
	DMA: not supported
	PIO: pio0 
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014ee6abe7ac97
	NAA		: 5
	IEEE OUI	: 0014ee
	Unique ID	: 6abe7ac97
Checksum: correct

parted:

(parted) mkpart primary btrfs 0 10
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label
(parted) mklabel gpt                                                      
Error: Input/output error during read on /dev/sdb
Retry/Ignore/Cancel? ^C                                                   
Error: Input/output error during write on /dev/sdb
Retry/Ignore/Cancel? ^C

PS: when I chose cancel or ignore, parted did not respond any more.

fdisk:

 delta67@Pollux  ~  sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdc: Input/output error

dmesg:

[189049.345604] sd 20:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
[189049.345608] sd 20:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 Sense Key : 0x5 [current] 
[189049.345610] sd 20:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 ASC=0x20 ASCQ=0x0 
[189049.345613] sd 20:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
[189049.345615] blk_update_request: critical target error, dev sdb, sector 0
[189049.345617] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read

I've also tried testdisk and did a quick search but had no luck. The deep search gives IO error for every bit it reads.

I am not so sure if it is still the connection problem. And if the disk is partly broken, is there any way that I may rescue at least some of the data inside?

Thanks again for everyone.

Last edited by delta67 (2016-04-14 10:17:18)

wudu

Member

Registered: 2010-03-08

Posts: 83

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

Hi

The "spin, snap, spin, snap" is a bad sign. I've had some of these disk myself but there was just one case where I was able to get some data from it. At that case I tried the disk again after some days and it spinned up correctly. It was just luck I guess or the following really works and it was a temperature difference:

There are articles on the internet claiming that cooling the device in the freezer would help to give them a last succesful spin up but there are also many calling that bullshit. I never tried that so I can't tell.

delta67

Member

Registered: 2016-03-26

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

There are articles on the internet claiming that cooling the device in the freezer would help to give them a last succesful spin up but there are also many calling that bullshit. I never tried that so I can't tell.

Thanks a lot for replying. Actually I've also thought about temperature problem and I don't think it is that hot. But this idea still sounds interesting and I will give try later today lol.

delta67

Member

Registered: 2016-03-26

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

Seriously I've tried to freeze the disk. It didn't work.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

Seriously I've tried to freeze the disk. It didn't work.

Don't trust everything you read on the internet

If you can take the disk out of the enclosure and it uses an interface you can connect directly to a motherboard (like sata), I would try that, but from your description I'd say that if you have valuable data you really want to keep on that disk you should use professional data recovery services.

If it doesn't want to work don't insist, you may be making data recovery be more difficult later on.

---

R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

delta67

Member

Registered: 2016-03-26

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

If you can take the disk out of the enclosure and it uses an interface you can connect directly to a motherboard (like sata), I would try that,

Thanks for advice. I have already opened the enclosure. Will try on a SATA interface later if I could find one available. If it still doesn't work I will simply give it up.

delta67

Member

Registered: 2016-03-26

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Problem with external hard drive

It shows similar behavior when directly connected to SATA. I think it's gone. Thanks for everyone here.