suddenly cannot mount external USB HDD

[pjstock]

here's another strange one.

for years I have happily used a 2 TB Seagate external USB HDD (Model SRD00F2)
Yesterday it suddenly refused to mount as usual.

"Unable to Access Seagate Expansion Drive
Error mounting /dev/sdb1 at /media/peter/Seagate Expansion Drive"
Nor will it work on my Chromebook laptop (where it is recognized but shows nothing and prompts me to Format the drive)

however it works perfectly well when I switch over and boot Windows 7 (shows as NTFS and I have full access to all the files)

what could be going on?

the easiest solution would be for me to just get an alternate external HDD and copy everything over (which I should do anyway), and once I have everything backed up maybe Reformat.

But I'd like to understand what's going on.

[ajgreeny]

When you looked at it using Windows did you "Remove safely" before unplugging it?

If you did remove it properly you may also need to run chkdisk (is that what it's called? I haven't used Windows properly since 2005!) to correct any filesystem corruption.

If you didn't remove it properly it will still be flagged as in use when attached to Linux so try connecting it again to Windows, then running chkdisk and finally removing it safely before unplugging.

[pjstock]

That's a good suggestion

But I had not used Windows in years and this HDD had only beem used in Ubuntu.

I only fired up Windows to see if it might be readable there. And it was. .

When i quit windows i just did a Shutdown.

But I'll run chkdsk anyway.

[yancek]

If you use the HD only on Ubuntu what is the reason for using an ntfs filesystem on it? Do you share the data on the drive with other user using windows? Running chkdsk on windows would be a good start. How do you mount it usually? Do you use a terminal command or do it from the file manager?

Does the drive show when you run: sudo parted -l ?
Do you get the same error trying to mount with the command below?

sudo mount [/media/peter/"Seagate Expansion Drive"

[pjstock]

hmmmm. well, this morning it mounts correctly under Ubuntu.
so maybe that running chkdsk under Windows did the trick.

but to close the loop here and answer some questions.
why is it NTFS? oriiginally ( I think I have used this HDD for at east 15 years) I was switching between Wiinodws and Ubuntu. though more likely, I expect the HDD came formatted NTFS out of hte box and since it seemed to work correctly, I never thought of changing it.

How do I normally mount this drive?
it just shows up already mounted when I boot the system into Ubuntu.
(frankly I wish all my drives auto-mounted. on one desktop setup I have two supplemental HDDs that I use for data - like where I park my Thunderbird email profile and data - and that one I have to manuallly mount each time I boot. otherwise Thunderbird doesn't work. and to mount it I just click on it under "Other locations" under FILES in the sidebar.)

peter@peter-ThinkPad-T420:~$ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for peter: 
Model: ATA WDC WD5000LPLX-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  106MB   105MB   primary  ntfs         boot
 2      106MB   92.3GB  92.2GB  primary  ntfs
 3      92.3GB  122GB   30.0GB  primary  ext4
 4      122GB   500GB   378GB   primary  ext4


Model: Seagate Expansion Desk (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      8389kB  2000GB  2000GB  primary  ntfs         boot

peter@peter-ThinkPad-T420:~$

[TheFu]

If you use the HD only on Ubuntu what is the reason for using an ntfs filesystem on it? Do you share the data on the drive with other user using windows? Running chkdsk on windows would be a good start. How do you mount it usually? Do you use a terminal command or do it from the file manager?

Does the drive show when you run: sudo parted -l ?
Do you get the same error trying to mount with the command below?

[CODE]sudo mount [/media/peter/"Seagate Expansion Drive"CODE]

I have NTFS on specific USB storage devices due to some hardware that only supports writing files to NTFS or FAT32 (nothing else). These devices are only used with Linux, but I don't have any choice.

If I could, I'd use a Linux file system, but alas, that isn't supported. These storage devices are just scratch disks anyway, so nothing sits on them more than 1-2 days.

About once a month, NTFS becomes corrupted - always while recording using the non-Linux hardware and 1 - 100 files are lost. That's fine and I've come to expect it. Once the first file is corrupted, any later files will be corrupted too. The device mounts, but all the permissions literally show "????????????" and the newer files are all zero length.

This is my 2nd one of these stand-alone video recording devices. Both had the same issue. Anyway, after I pull whichever files I can get off the storage, I reformat the NTFS partition and that seems to make it fine ... er ... until the next time it happens. Sometimes that happens the same day and sometimes it will be fine for 60 days, but never longer.

Since around 2005, I've had bad luck with Seagate storage over 750G. I have older Seagate HDDs (300G - 320G sizes) which have lasted far longer than I would have wished. Initially, many were used as RAID disks, but the last 5+ yrs, they were repurposed as scratch disks. The larger disks just don't seem to last. Seagate has scrubbed the internet of their management lies when they had a major design failure around 2005 and lied about it for over a year. ~10% of their disks were failing, when typically less than 1% fail. At work, we had them replace all the models known to have issues - which was many thousands. Around 2010, I needed more storage and figured Seagate would have fixed any engineering issues by that point. 2 2TB HDDs and both failed right around the 1 yr warranty period. One after 10 months, the other after 13 months. I was pissed. Nobody buys a HDD expecting them to fail when the warranty is up. Backblaze does a quarterly disk failure report and for a long time Seagate drives have had significantly less lifespans that most other models. The failure rates were higher and that company was getting enough for a true statistical sample - unlike my bad luck just a few drives, though I've probably owned about 20 Seagates over the decades.

Have you run SMART tests on the drive? Does it report issues? Do a short test first, so you can get any major issues reported in just a few minutes. Depending on the raw values shown, a long test, which can take a full day, might be desirable. As part of my HDD nominal maintenance, I do daily versioned backups, weekly short SMART testing and monthly long SMART testing for all disks. They just finished on 1 system today,

 $ egrep 'Reallocated|Pending' smart.2023-10-17.s*
smart.2023-10-17.sda:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sda:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sda:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdb:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdb:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdb:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdc:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdc:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdc:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdd:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdd:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sdd:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sde:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sde:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-17.sde:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

Looking good! The zeros at the end of each line mean there aren't any failures that need to be addressed.
On another system ... things aren't so good:

$ egrep 'Reallocated|Pending' smart.2023-10-16.s*
smart.2023-10-16.sda:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sda:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sda:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdb:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdb:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdb:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdc:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdc:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdc:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdd:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdd:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdd:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sde:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sde:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sde:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdf:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdf:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdg:  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   252   252   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdg:196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
smart.2023-10-16.sdg:197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3

So, sdg is having some issues. Let's look deeper ...

Model Family:     SAMSUNG SpinPoint F4 EG (AF)
Device Model:     SAMSUNG HD155UI
User Capacity:    1,500,301,910,016 bytes [1.50 TB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm

==> WARNING: Using smartmontools or hdparm with this
drive may result in data loss due to a firmware bug.
****** THIS DRIVE MAY OR MAY NOT BE AFFECTED! ******
Buggy and fixed firmware report same version number!
See the following web pages for details:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/223571en
https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/SamsungF4EGBadBlocks
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       77
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0023   067   067   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       10100
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       94808
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   062   062   000    Old_age   Always       -       831755790
191 G-Sense_Error_Rate      0x0022   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       11223393
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   252   252   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   252   252   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x002a   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       40654

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%     29272         919114680
# 2  Short offline       Completed: read failure       50%     28610         919114680
# 3  Short offline       Completed: read failure       90%     28506         919114680

BTW, I've known about this drive having issues for some time. It isn't holding any data anymore (it can, I just don't put any on it). Need to power it off and set it into the "to be destroyed" pile, after I encrypt it and lose the decryption key. It was a backup drive for many, many, years. To be far, 94808 hrs is 10.8 yrs, so I have nothing bad to say about the quality of this disk. It was definitely a good value for my specific use.

Anyway, check the SMART data on the drive.

All drives fail. All of them. Hopefully, they fail AFTER we have good backups and well after a reasonable expected lifespan. BTW, some of my old 320G Seagate drives have over 13 yrs on them. Just sayin. I don't own any Seagate storage larger than 320G anymore. They all died. All of them before a "reasonable lifespan". SMART seems to think the Samsung HDD is a Seagate. See the firmware warning? Interesting.

[yancek]

frankly I wish all my drives auto-mounted.

You can put an entry in /etc/fstab to do that but if they are not always attached, it can create other problems on boot. Auto mounting drives was a standard for years but is pretty insecure in most use cases particularly with a Linux system which by design, is multi-user.

15 years is excellent, might start looking for a replacement.

[alleycat10]

When you looked at it using Windows did you "Remove safely" before unplugging it?

If you did remove it properly you may also need to run chkdisk (is that what it's called? I haven't used Windows properly since 2005!) to correct any filesystem corruption.

If you didn't remove it properly it will still be flagged as in use when attached to Linux so try connecting it again to Windows, then running chkdisk and finally removing it safely before unplugging.

All I had to do was log into Windows 10 and repair those drives then log back into Ubuntu 24.04 and both my external drives worked normally again. Easy fix. Thanks so much.

[renegado50]

I have the same problem with an external HDD of 2 TB. I tried everything but always end at this:



What error am I committing?

[coffeecat]

Back to sleep, old thread. Closed.

If you have a similar problem, please start your own thread.