0

I've got a Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements 25A2. This is the way it introduces itself through the lsusb command.

Unfortunately, I cannot format it. Through Gnome Disk Utility the command refuses to run and returns: “Error wiping device: Failed to probe the device ‘/dev/sdd’ (udisks-error-quark, 0)”.

I tried various commands but they all failed:

  • sudo fsck /dev/sdd
  • sudo e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/sdd
  • sudo e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/sdd

I want to recreate a file system because we can consider that the device is totally empty (and notice I haven't got any image copy).

(base) avy@machine:~$ sudo parted -l
Erreur: /dev/sdd : étiquette de disque inconnue #unknown disk's label
Modèle : WD Elements 25A2 (scsi)                                          
Disque /dev/sdd : 2000GB
Taille des secteurs (logiques/physiques) : 512B/512B #block's size (logical/physical)
Table de partitions : unknown #partition table
Drapeaux de disque : #disk's flags

As far as I know, solutions like DDRescue are based on existing image of a file system (e.g. sudo ddrescue <file_name_source> <file_name_target>.img <file_name_log>), so I can’t use them.

The hard drive itself seems "healthy" after SMART control:

  • sudo smartctl --health /dev/sdd → SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
  • sudo smartctl --log=error /dev/sdd → SMART Error Log Version: 1 \n No Errors Logged

So, I have a little hope to avoid throwing it in the trash.

Here are the kernel messages relating to the drive:

sudo dmesg --follow

[  444.527131] usb 2-4: Product: Elements 25A2
[  444.527134] usb 2-4: Manufacturer: Western Digital
[  444.527138] usb 2-4: SerialNumber: 575855314533383859304150
[  444.528739] usb-storage 2-4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[  444.529073] scsi host6: usb-storage 2-4:1.0
[  445.546672] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       Elements 25A2    1021 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[  445.546937] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[  445.547812] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Spinning up disk...
[  446.570416] ........ready
[  453.738963] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 3906963456 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.82 TiB)
[  453.739246] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
[  453.739251] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08
[  453.739479] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page found
[  453.739487] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
[  456.492061] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  456.492069] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  456.492074] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  456.492080] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  456.492087] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  456.492096] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  459.561974] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  459.561982] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  459.561988] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  459.561994] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  459.562001] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  459.562010] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  462.747978] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  462.747986] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  462.747991] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  462.747997] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  462.748004] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  462.748012] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  462.748032] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[  465.948181] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  465.948188] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  465.948192] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  465.948197] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  465.948202] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  465.948210] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  469.216369] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  469.216371] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  469.216372] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  469.216374] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  469.216375] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  469.216378] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  472.382131] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  472.382139] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  472.382145] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  472.382151] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  472.382157] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  472.382166] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  475.548568] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  475.548570] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  475.548571] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  475.548573] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  475.548574] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  475.548577] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  475.548611] Dev sdd: unable to read RDB block 0
[  478.628200] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  478.628208] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  478.628213] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  478.628220] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  478.628227] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  478.628236] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  481.707768] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  481.707776] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  481.707782] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  481.707788] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  481.707795] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  481.707804] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  484.864341] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  484.864349] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  484.864355] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  484.864361] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 08 00
[  484.864368] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 24 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  484.864377] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 3, async page read
[  487.982899] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  487.982907] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  487.982912] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  487.982919] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  487.982925] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  487.982935] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  491.116325] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  491.116333] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  491.116339] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  491.116345] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  491.116351] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  491.116361] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read
[  491.116432]  sdd: unable to read partition table
[  491.504986] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI disk
[  494.284826] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  494.284834] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  494.284840] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  494.284846] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  494.284853] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  497.472400] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[  497.472408] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[  497.472413] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[  497.472419] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] tag#0 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  497.472426] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdd, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[  497.472435] Buffer I/O error on dev sdd, logical block 0, async page read

Disclaimer: I won't accept answers such as "Buy a new hard-drive", "Use warranty" (all examples given are true stories). There's nothing of value in this hard-drive, I want to improve my IT skills and bring added value to Stack Exchange platforms.

Improve this question
1
  • 2
    You cannot run fsck on a drive, only on a formatted partition. You show no partitions and no partition type label. Drive should be gpt partitioned, then create partition(s). With gparted under device choose gpt over usual default of MBR(msdos). Commented Nov 29, 2024 at 18:32

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

The error message indicates there is no recognizable partition table on the disk, so there are no partitions to format. So you'll need to partition it first.

Since the disk is 2000GB in size, it's near the absolute upper limit the classic MBR partitioning scheme can handle. It might be a good idea to use the newer GPT partitioning scheme instead.

With parted, that would be:

sudo parted /dev/sdd
(parted) mklabel gpt

Assuming the mklabel command is successfully completed, you'll then be able to create one or more partitions to the disk with the mkpart command of parted.

For a external hard drive, a single partition that will encompass all the disk space is the usual solution. Just choose the filesystem type according to what you wish to do with it: for a ~2 TB disk, if you want to use it with Linux only, XFS or ext4 might be good choices; if you want to access the contents with Windows systems too, pick NTFS.

If you use parted to create your partition, it will probably automatically format it for you. But if you use some other partitioning command, you might have to format it yourself, using a command like sudo mkfs.<filesystem type> /dev/sdd1. Note that in the Unix/Linux world, "making a filesystem" (hence mkfs) is the preferred term over "formatting".

Your sudo dmesg --follow output indicates the disk repeatedly detects an unrecoverable read error when trying to read disk block #0. That disk is effectively dead.

Since the partition table is normally located in the very first disk blocks, errors in that area can easily make the disk completely unusable. And if trying to rewrite the partition table also fails, that means the disk has already run out of spare blocks to substitute for bad blocks - which means it is already fairly severely damaged.

If there is an usable range of blocks further into the disk, you could theoretically use dmsetup to set up a virtual block device that represents the range of good blocks only, and you might be able to use that.

But in practice it would be extremely awkward to use, and something you could do in Linux only - Windows and MacOS would not be able to access a filesystem set up in such an unorthodox way.

And if the disk has already failed this severely, the fault might get still worse over time, and cause you to lose any data you stored on this disk. It's simply not worth the risk to attempt to keep using this disk any more.

Googling on "WD Elements 25A2", this seems to be a classical HDD ("spinning rust") in a portable form factor. These things rely on moving parts with tolerances about 10x finer than human hair: dropping them or knocking them around can easily damage them, especially if the disk is in use when it happens. In this day and age, as SSD prices keep coming down, SSD technology is a much more sensible choice for portable storage devices.

Improve this answer
3
  • Thank you for your fast reaction. Unfortunately, I think it is getting worse as expected. At the beginning of the parted process it failed : mklabel gpt or mklabel msdos returned Erreur d'entrée/sortie lors de la lecture sur /dev/sdd meaning Error I/O during the reading on /dev/sdd. As told here I wrote the command sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd bs=512 count=1000 then it won't work too : dd: erreur d'écriture dans '/dev/sdd': Erreur d'entrée/sortie meaning error during the writing in /dev/sdd: error I/O. Commented Nov 29, 2024 at 20:52
  • In that case, you may find more details about the I/O errors by running sudo dmesg -H and scrolling to the end of the listing. However, regardless of the details, the results of your experiments suggest that there is some sort of fault at the very beginning of the disk, which normally holds the partition table. SMART is not all-knowing. Did you receive this drive as new from a reliable supplier, or with a suspiciously cheap price from an independent vendor in Amazon Marketplace or similar? The latter is a well-known way to get scammed with counterfeit data storage products. Commented Nov 29, 2024 at 22:47
  • I guess you wanted sudo dmesg --follow or sudo dmesg -Hw (just saying for people reading and facing the same issue). I am not skilled enough to get what it output exactly, nevertheless I think with my modest knowledge that when it displays [sdd] Spinning up disk.. ready it means it is physically okay. So I updated my original post to show the whole display for sdd device. About the supplier, it was years ago in a physical store (a store on the same concept as Walmart). I personally never had chance with WD products. Commented Nov 30, 2024 at 11:47
0

Your disk is failing hardware failure, the kernel says it fails to read anything; the hard drive itself signals it had irrecoverable read errors.

I'm afraid this is not something software can fix. Your drive is probably just broken.

Now, this might just be a case of a broken USB-to-SATA converter board inside your USB HDD enclosure. That's hard to tell; these things do lie. Make sure you supply sufficient power to it, and if you do, try to use a different enclosure.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.