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So yesterday i had a power failure in my house and now my external HD doesn't work anymore i tried format via cli with mkfs and after 8 hours nothing... gparted stay in infinite loop with de hd plugged and fsck same results. fdisk -l frozen without show him but lsblk shows

$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 465,8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   301M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0  48,8G  0 part /
├─sda3   8:3    0   7,8G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4   8:4    0  29,3G  0 part /home
└─sda5   8:5    0 379,5G  0 part /media/OLD
sdb      8:16   0 465,8G  0 disk    # this is the External HD
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

I also tried disks utility to format but don't change i click to format but nothing..

enter image description here

I don't think that is hardware problem anyone have a solution for this?

OS info

NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04.3 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Linux Lite 5.6"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
Artur Meinild
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Yan Oliveira
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1 Answers1

3

Analyze the problem according to this link

Can't format my usb drive. I have already tried with mkdosfs and gparted - 'Analysis of the problem'

and you will probably find a solution. The hardware of an HDD should survive a power failure, even if the partition table and or file system can be damaged and cause confusion.

First try the following

  • Disconnect other USB devices. Sometimes USB devices can disturb the function for each other.
  • Test with other USB ports.
  • Connect separate power supply for the HDD, if available.

Install mkusb in your Ubuntu system and

  • 'restore to a Standard storage device' (if you are happy with a FAT32 system)

  • 'Wipe the first mibibyte' of the device,

    and then use gparted to create a partition table and one or more partitions with the file systems you want. If you need no compatibility with Windows or MacOS, ext4 is a good file system.

sudodus
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    The first step doesn't work and mkusb is stuck for few hours in the same screen here – Yan Oliveira Nov 08 '21 at 20:59
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    @YanOliveira, That's too bad. I'm afraid, that there is something very wrong with your drive or with the container (box, adapter or whatever interface you have between the HDD and the USB port). What kind of interface is it? Can you connect the HDD without that interface, for example with another interface or directly to a SATA or eSATA port in a computer? – sudodus Nov 09 '21 at 07:55
  • I'm using a hd case to connect with the notebook and I don't have how connect directly. yesterday it worked but only with 2gb I don't know how but trying to put back to 500gb it is in the same situation than before – Yan Oliveira Nov 09 '21 at 13:20
  • Now fsck display this message here but nothing of these commands works – Yan Oliveira Nov 09 '21 at 13:27
  • Can you borrow a computer with an eSATA port or a desktop computer, where you can connect your HDD via a SATA cable to the motherboard? That way you can check if the HDD itself is healthy (while the hd case is bad) or if it is the other way around. - Did you try with elevated permissions: sudo e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sdxn; sudo e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sdxn ; where x is the drive letter and n is the partition number? – sudodus Nov 09 '21 at 18:32
  • The case is fine I tested with other hd and worked.. the commands I tried with sudo so that's not the problem. Now I'm installing windows in my machine to try few apps of hd recovery – Yan Oliveira Nov 09 '21 at 18:54
  • Good, you have localized the problem to the HDD. I hope that you can fix it and wish you good luck. Anyway please share your results, whatever they are. – sudodus Nov 09 '21 at 18:58