Unable to delete files and folders

Question

I am trying to delete some regular files in my machine (external hard-disk). It will throw the below errors,

rm: cannot remove 'Personal/Mobile': Input/output error 
rm: cannot remove 'Personal/mygarrage': Input/output error 
rm: cannot remove 'Personal/Photos': Input/output error 
rm: cannot remove 'Personal/typewriting': Input/output error

The actual file permissions looks,

ubuntu@ubuntu:$ ls -ltr
ls: cannot access 'Mobile': Input/output error
ls: cannot access 'mygarrage': Input/output error
ls: cannot access 'Photos': Input/output error
ls: cannot access 'typewriting': Input/output error
total 4
d????????? ? ?      ?         ?            ? typewriting
d????????? ? ?      ?         ?            ? Photos
d????????? ? ?      ?         ?            ? mygarrage
d????????? ? ?      ?         ?            ? Mobile

What is the problem of this? Is there any way to delete this files?

File system info:

Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev           devtmpfs  7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs     1.6G   18M  1.6G   2% /run
/dev/sdb       iso9660   1.4G  1.4G     0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0     squashfs  1.4G  1.4G     0 100% /rofs
/cow           overlay   7.8G  2.1G  5.8G  26% /
tmpfs          tmpfs     7.8G  344K  7.8G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs          tmpfs     5.0M  8.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs          tmpfs     7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs          tmpfs     7.8G  932K  7.8G   1% /tmp
tmpfs          tmpfs     1.6G   84K  1.6G   1% /run/user/999
/dev/sda7      ext4      379G  229G  131G  64% /media/ubuntu/1c328b87-efa9-48d7-b98a-a28809d7a7c6
/dev/sdd1      fuseblk   932G  440G  492G  48% /media/ubuntu/SeagateBackupPlusDrive

Try find Personal/Mobile -delete. See if that error repeats — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Sep 04 '18 at 15:42
@SergiyKolodyazhnyy Getting find: ‘Mobile’: Input/output error — sprabhakaran, Sep 04 '18 at 15:56
I can suspect both a software and a hardware failure. For example, there might be something wrong with the file system. 1. What file system is it? 2. What kind of drive is it (brand name and model, and how is it connected to the computer)? — sudodus, Sep 04 '18 at 15:57
@sudodus I am trying to delete files in external hard disk (seagate -1TB). (*I missed for mentioning in post, now updated!) — sprabhakaran, Sep 04 '18 at 16:03
You help us help you, if you answer all questions (that are possible to answer). — sudodus, Sep 04 '18 at 17:45
@j-money dmesg print so many logs. I have updated about the file system infos. — sprabhakaran, Sep 05 '18 at 04:24
So it is a live (I guess live-only) system and an installed system (/dev/sda7). It should mean that there is a root file system with an ext file system. This means that, when booted into the live system, unmount the partition /dev/sda7 and then try to repair its file system like so, sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sda7; See more details at this link — sudodus, Sep 05 '18 at 04:43

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 17:51

Try to repair the file system

Depending on file system, there are different ways that you can try to repair it according to this link:

Repair the partition table and file system of a pendrive.

S.M.A.R.T. information

You should also check the 'hardware health', the S.M.A.R.T. information according to the following link:

S.M.A.R.T. information of HDD and SSD

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '22 at 13:51

0

Read about mount/umount

In my case directory had be unmount, to be deleted itself or its subdirectories/files

sudo umount -f /media/sami/OS\ WIN7

Then simply sudo rm -rf sami/OS\ WIN7 worked for me

answered Jul 21 '22 at 13:51

Sami

236
2
7

Unable to delete files and folders

2 Answers2

Try to repair the file system

S.M.A.R.T. information