Is my External HDD broken?

[sakibmoon]

I tried to format my Toshiba 1 TB External HDD a few days ago. It got stuck after completing about 90%. Now it is not showing on my Ubuntu. I tried with Windows too.

Then I installed Gparted. Gparted takes a great amount of time when I plug in the HDD, but if fails to show the device. Later I tried to mount it using terminal.
At first I tried 'fdisk' command. But it didn't show the device connected. Later when I tried 'udisks' command to mount the a specific device and searched for the available device with tab it showed a extra device named 'sdb' . It showed only when the HDD is connected. So, I tried to mount it from terminal, but it failed. Later I tried to format it from terminal. Failed again. Do you think it's broken?

Is there anything that I can try to make it work? Is it possible to repair it?

[sakibmoon]

I just want answer if it is possible to repair it or is it completely useless. Any clue would be fine.

[sanderd17]

How many internal drives do you have?

Can you give the output of


ls /dev


If the external drive is an USB drive, can you give us the output of



lsusb

[sakibmoon]

The output of the ls /dev is following


agpgart loop5 ram8 tty12 tty40 ttyS2
autofs loop6 ram9 tty13 tty41 ttyS3
block loop7 random tty14 tty42 uinput
bsg mapper rfkill tty15 tty43 urandom
btrfs-control mcelog root tty16 tty44 usbmon0
bus mem rtc tty17 tty45 usbmon1
cdrom net rtc0 tty18 tty46 usbmon2
cdrw network_latency scd0 tty19 tty47 usbmon3
char network_throughput sda tty2 tty48 usbmon4
console null sda1 tty20 tty49 usbmon5
core oldmem sda2 tty21 tty5 vcs
cpu pktcdvd sda3 tty22 tty50 vcs1
cpu_dma_latency port sda5 tty23 tty51 vcs2
disk ppp sda6 tty24 tty52 vcs3
dri psaux sda7 tty25 tty53 vcs4
dvd ptmx sda8 tty26 tty54 vcs5
dvdrw pts sda9 tty27 tty55 vcs6
ecryptfs ram0 sg0 tty28 tty56 vcs7
fb0 ram1 sg1 tty29 tty57 vcsa
fd ram10 shm tty3 tty58 vcsa1
full ram11 snapshot tty30 tty59 vcsa2
fuse ram12 snd tty31 tty6 vcsa3
hpet ram13 sr0 tty32 tty60 vcsa4
input ram14 stderr tty33 tty61 vcsa5
kmsg ram15 stdin tty34 tty62 vcsa6
log ram2 stdout tty35 tty63 vcsa7
loop0 ram3 tty tty36 tty7 vga_arbiter
loop1 ram4 tty0 tty37 tty8 zero
loop2 ram5 tty1 tty38 tty9
loop3 ram6 tty10 tty39 ttyS0
loop4 ram7 tty11 tty4 ttyS1



The output of the lsusb is


Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0480:a004 Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub


The device is 1 TB external hard disk drive. So, of course it is connected via usb. The HDD was connected when I performed the commands.

[desnaike]

Do you have any other usb devices such as keyboard,mouse card reader attached.

[sakibmoon]

No. I don't use USB keyboard or mouse. Only USB that was attached was the HDD.

[sakibmoon]

I think you should look at the fifth line of the second output



Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0480:a004 Toshiba America Info. Systems, Inc.

My HDD is of Toshiba.

[desnaike]

What file system did u try to format the drive as and did u reboot the system after the failed attempt.

[sakibmoon]

I tried to format it to NTFS file system. I didn't reboot after the failed attempt. I reconnected it and it wasn't working anymore.

[sanderd17]

The drive is visible on the USB port, but it isn't recognised as a hard drive.

Maybe the USB controller is broken.

If the HDD is still under warranty, return it to the shop.

Otherwise, open the case of the hard drive and put the drive directly into your computer (maybe replace your current drive and use a live CD to boot if you don't have enough cables).

If you can work with your hard drive via this method, you could consider to buy another case, they aren't that expensive. Or you could use the 1TB drive as internal drive.

Watch out: opening the case probably voids the warranty.