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So my computer runs Ubuntu 20.04 and has a SATA SSD as containing the root, / , directory and another HDD containing the /home partition. About a week ago, I started to have a problem with the HDD and /home partition not being mounted on boot. It says "Device in error" then "A start job is running for dev-disk-by-uuid\xxx". That UUID is the one for my /home partition. I am still able to login after it eventually boots and when I open gparted, it gives me an I/O error on the drive. After a couple of reboots and waiting a while, it would eventually find the disk, mount the partition and it would work just fine with no issues. I originally thought this to be a hardware problem and that the HDD disk was just failing, that's why Ubuntu couldn't find/mount the drive on boot. But after troubleshooting every hardware step and running multiple test on my drive, nothing worked and the drive passed every test. I now suspect something could be wrong with Ubuntu, maybe firmware or drivers? The drive works just fine when I plug it into a Windows PC and mount it using the problem EXT2fsb to read EXT4 filesystem drives.
I noticed the problem usually occurs after my computer has been off for a period of time. Say when I go to sleep at night and wake up, it fails.

This could still be a hardware problem but I want to eliminate the possibility that something may be wrong in Ubuntu, that's why it can't read the drive.

Here is my fstab for my SSD (sda) and HDD (sdb)

Any suggestions or ideas are appreciated! Thank you

Benjamin1029
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  • I would say you have a hardware problem not an OS problem. That is just my experience. – David Jan 11 '21 at 13:18
  • I also suspect a hardware issue, even if it (still) seems to work in Windows. Nevertheless, have the file system checked thoroughly (fsck -f) to check whether the issue persists after that. It may be useful to include the line for the drive in /etc/fstab in your post. – vanadium Jan 11 '21 at 13:20
  • Is it an old slow HDD and fast SSD? System may be booting fast enough that HDD is not yet up to speed. I keep /home inside my / (root) on SSD, but have all data on HDD. And then you can have slower HDD or add fstab setting for data partition to mount only when accessed. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1013677/storing-data-on-second-hdd-mounting & https://askubuntu.com/questions/1058756/installing-all-applications-on-a-ssd-disk-and-putting-all-files-on-hdd-disk – oldfred Jan 11 '21 at 16:14
  • I will run "fsck -f /dev/sdb1", which is my /home partition. I will also post the fstab file when I get back from work today. – Benjamin1029 Jan 11 '21 at 16:29
  • The SSD and HDD are both relatively new (about a year old). The HDD is 7200RPM and should be fast enough. What is the fstab setting I can use for only mounting the drive when accessed? Is it a difficult process to move my /home to my / (root) on my SSD without data loss? – Benjamin1029 Jan 11 '21 at 16:31

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