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Yesterday, when I was working with my Ubuntu 14.10 (x64) and wanted to save an attachment from an e-mail in Thunderbird, there was a dialog saying that the file could not be written to the /tmp directory. I tried googling that problem and also realized that I was not able to download files and save other things. So I rebooted my system and saw the following output on the screen:

I/O Error on device sdd2, logical block 5243414

...

I/O Error on device sdd2, logical block 5243423
critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 41949392

So obviously some sectors of my drive (Transcend StoreJet 25M3 USB 3) were destroyed just while working with it (the drive was not moved, no shock was applied to it), and those sectors were essential to boot the system, because the following Ubuntu loading screen never finished...

The disk utility failed to perform a self-test on the drive ("SELF-TEST FAILED" it says), and the "Read Error Rates" value in the SMART table is 13, so pretty much errors (all of them happened recently, because the last time I checked the table it was a zero value).

And I know that I should save my data and replace the drive, but I need it now and want to replace the lost data to get it working.

I already tried to recover the system with chrooting it and excecute apt-get upgrade, but it did not help. Also the detection of broken packages in recovery mode does not help.

How should I proceed?

Fabby
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Ercksen
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    Then you already know what to do, you just don't want to do it... – psusi Jan 06 '15 at 20:38
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    Welcome to askubuntu. Working with an unreliable drive is a waste of time as you have discovered. You may find this interesting http://askubuntu.com/questions/291570/mark-bad-sectors-on-hard-drive-without-formating?rq=1 but truly you need to replace the drive and review data recovery procedures. – Elder Geek Jan 09 '15 at 13:33
  • I have already heard of marking bad sectors... But the problem is that the data is lost. However, the drive will be replaced and Ubuntu will be re-installed. :( – Ercksen Jan 09 '15 at 17:35

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Hard disks mostly warn users before dying. You've got such a warning and there is only one thing to be said:

Back up your data now and get a new drive!

Please!

Pretty please?
Fabby
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