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A relative asked me to look at a Seagate 2TB external hard drive of theirs that they said used to work and no longer does. I popped it into my desktop and nothing happened for a while other than it showing up (with an appropriate name) in lsusb.

After about 10 minutes I used ls \dev | grep sd and saw that it finally came up as /dev/sdc, so I tried to view it in fdisk -l, but it was not listed. I figured maybe it was a GPT table so I opened it in GParted, but it was taking forever to load so I tried lsblk where I got this:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   108G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0   3.8G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   0   1.8T  0 part 
sdc      8:32   0   128P  0 disk 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

Now either my relative is somehow in possession of the largest drive known to man, or something VERY strange has occurred. Assuming the latter, is there any way I could go about fixing this issue?

A little extra note: I tried opening the drive with GParted again, this time waiting for it to load, and it too believed the drive to contain 128 PB of unallocated space, so this is something internal. Also, clearly there are no partitions detected, and I already told my relative there is likely nothing that can be done about the data on it, which they said they didn't care about anyway, they just want the drive to be usable again.

I tried rewriting the MBR using dd which failed, and so I got the following relevant messages from dmesg:

[15404.910434] scsi_io_completion_action: 14 callbacks suppressed
[15404.910445] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.910449] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.910453] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.910457] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.910458] print_req_error: 14 callbacks suppressed
[15404.910461] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.914427] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.914430] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.914432] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.914435] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.914437] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.914440] buffer_io_error: 38 callbacks suppressed
[15404.914442] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 0, async page read
[15404.915937] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.915941] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.915944] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.915949] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 06 00 00
[15404.915953] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 0
[15404.915959] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 1, async page read
[15404.915963] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 2, async page read
[15404.915966] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 3, async page read
[15404.917683] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.917686] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.917689] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.917692] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.917694] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.917698] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 0, async page read
[15404.919186] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.919189] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.919192] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.919195] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 06 00 00
[15404.919197] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 0
[15404.919200] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 1, async page read
[15404.919203] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 2, async page read
[15404.919205] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 3, async page read
[15404.920932] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.920935] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.920937] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.920940] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.920942] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.920945] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 0, async page read
[15404.922433] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.922436] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.922438] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.922440] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 06 00 00
[15404.922442] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 0
[15404.922445] Buffer I/O error on dev sdc, logical block 1, async page read
[15404.923930] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.923932] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.923934] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.923936] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.923938] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.925438] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.925442] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.925446] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.925449] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 06 00 00
[15404.925453] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 2 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 3 prio class 0
[15404.925481] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[15404.927181] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE cmd_age=0s
[15404.927185] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Sense Key : Medium Error [current] 
[15404.927189] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[15404.927192] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] tag#0 CDB: Read(16) 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00
[15404.927195] blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdc, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[15404.937694] Dev sdc: unable to read RDB block 0
[15404.945196]  sdc: unable to read partition table

OS: Debian 10 (Bullseye) with kernel 5.5.13-2

smartctl output is:

smartctl 7.1 2019-12-30 r5022 [x86_64-linux-5.5.0-1-amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-19, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Mobile HDD
Device Model:     ST2000LM007-1R8174
Serial Number:    WDZCWPT0
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 0b926222d
Firmware Version: SBK2
User Capacity:    18,446,744,073,709,551,104 bytes [18446 PB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Mon Apr 27 18:21:43 2020 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Read SMART Data failed: scsi error aborted command

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Status command failed: scsi error aborted command
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: UNKNOWN!
SMART Status, Attributes and Thresholds cannot be read.

Read SMART Log Directory failed: scsi error aborted command

Read SMART Error Log failed: scsi error aborted command

Read SMART Self-test Log failed: scsi error aborted command

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

SeaGate Utilities information gives:

==========================================================================================
 SeaChest_SMART - Seagate drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
 Copyright (c) 2014-2019 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
 SeaChest_SMART Version: 1.12.0-1_19_23 X86_64
 Build Date: Jun 10 2019
 Today: Mon Apr 27 18:07:59 2020
==========================================================================================

/dev/sg3 - BACKUP+ - 90CD8083BJBG         - SCSI
    Vendor ID: Seagate 
    Model Number: BACKUP+         
    Serial Number: 90CD8083BJBG
    Firmware Revision: 0304
    World Wide Name: 5000000000000001
    Drive Capacity (PB/PiB): 144.12/128.00
    Temperature Data:
        Current Temperature (C): Not Reported
        Highest Temperature (C): Not Reported
        Lowest Temperature (C): Not Reported
    Power On Time: Not Reported
    Power On Hours: Not Reported
    MaxLBA: 281474976710653
    Native MaxLBA: Not Reported
    Logical Sector Size (B): 512
    Physical Sector Size (B): 512
    Sector Alignment: 0
    Rotation Rate (RPM): Not Reported
    Form Factor: Not Reported
    Last DST information:
        Not supported
    Long Drive Self Test Time: Not Supported
    Interface speed:
        Not Reported
    Annualized Workload Rate (TB/yr): Not Reported
    Total Bytes Read (B): Not Reported
    Total Bytes Written (B): Not Reported
    Encryption Support: Not Supported
    Cache Size (MiB): Not Reported
    Read Look-Ahead: Enabled
    Write Cache: Enabled
    SMART Status: Unknown or Not Supported
    ATA Security Information: Not Supported
    Firmware Download Support: Full, Segmented
    Specifications Supported:
        SPC-4
        SBC-3
        UAS
        SPC-4
    Features Supported:
        Power Conditions [Enabled]
        Informational Exceptions [Mode 0]
Brayden Freitas
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    Seagate Warranty Validation – Freddy Apr 28 '20 at 13:01
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    This is probably obvious to most, but do not trust this drive for any data in the future. They are too cheap for that. – spuck Apr 28 '20 at 16:35
  • If the current contents is not relevant, then have your most frequently used operating system wipe and repartition the drive. Drive metadata needs to be correct for proper operation in the long run. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Apr 28 '20 at 19:16
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    @pipe I didn't realize this etiquette, and seeing the next day responses I changed the accepted answer accordingly. Thank you for the advice! – Brayden Freitas Apr 29 '20 at 02:42
  • @Freddy That's my next planned step. Thank you for the direct link! – Brayden Freitas Apr 29 '20 at 02:42
  • @pipe Even with an accepted answer, others have the chance to post a better one. – glglgl Apr 29 '20 at 09:10
  • @glglgl Yes, but the answer will be marked as "accepted" when searching, so many people will skip it when looking for questions to answer. – pipe Apr 29 '20 at 10:11
  • Nevertheless, if the first answer works for the OP, there is no reason for them not to accept it, @pipe. If a better answer comes along, the OP can always choose to accept that one. On the other hand, asking people to wait 24 hours before accepting (!) is likely to result in their forgetting to accept at all. There is no such requirement here, users are free to accept as soon as the system allows them to. – terdon Apr 30 '20 at 09:49
  • @terdon There is a complication here that the first accepted post was just plain wrong and didn't solve anything for OP. Perhaps that's orthogonal to the question about timing, but in this case it would've helped to stay back a little and see what others had to say. – pipe Apr 30 '20 at 10:20

6 Answers6

21

Based on your smartctl output, the problem isn't that the physical storage of the drive has failed; instead, the fact that it can't even correctly report the size (which should be "burned in" to the firmware) suggests that the controller electronics at some point in the chain have failed.

Most external USB hard disks have basic but not always advanced SMART support; Seagate drives have been known not to provide even the baseline expected support, so I'm not willing to say for certain that the SMART failures are a result of the controller failure. However, the inaccurately reported size indicates that's what happened.

If this is an "all-in-one" external drive, you might be able to recover the data by removing the actual hard disk and connecting it to a standalone USB-HD adapter. (This would be the case if the failure is in the USB interface electronics and not the onboard drive electronics.) If that doesn't work and you get similar errors, your data may be recoverable if you send it to a recovery lab, although this tends to be very expensive and only worthwhile if you have something like priceless family photos or a valuable Bitcoin wallet.

chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-
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  • @chrylis-onstrike- : your answer is probably correct. If it's indeed an "all-in-one" external drive, the data might be encrypted by the controller, with a key specific to the model but not to the drive. It means that if you buy the exact same model, you might be able to recover the data by using the new controller with the old disk. – Eric Duminil Apr 28 '20 at 13:39
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    I have seen USB-enclosures die while the disk inside was just fine. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Apr 28 '20 at 19:21
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    The drive wasn't worth it for me to try and recover any data off of, so I decided to just can it, but thank you a lot for providing a likely explanation mixed with a possible solution for anyone in the future! – Brayden Freitas Apr 29 '20 at 02:40
6

I'm afraid your drive is gone. The error clearly suggests that it has bad sectors and it tried to reallocate them but clearly there are no viable sectors left.

Looks like the HDD has been accumulating bad sectors for some time. It eventually has no space available for any more reallocation.

You can try running smartctl -a /dev/sdc to see if you can get additional information.

Edit

The smart data indicates that a problem in firmware is causing this issue. I've used drives that had more than a thousand bad sectors. Yours just seem to occupy the blocks required in initialization.

You may try and find out if Seagate offers any software solution from this link

Also, professional data rescuers might be able to fix the drive and the data. However, they'll probably cost way too much. So I don’t support going that way unless there’s something invaluable in the drive.

Additionally, you may try some hardware solutions on your own. Here's a simple tutorial from Youtube. However, you may lose both the drive and data if not careful.

rubaiat
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  • I added the output to the original question. I also have some SeaGate Utilities outputs I am going to add as well. It may be true that the drive is dead at this point though. – Brayden Freitas Apr 27 '20 at 22:24
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    Based on the smartctl output, this is incorrect. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Apr 28 '20 at 07:57
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    -1 This is completely unsupported and contrary to what OP has posted. There's absolutely no evidence of any reallocations or failures thereof. The reported errors are read errors (reallocation can only happen on writes), and the failure to read anything through smartctl suggests a controller failure or lack of SMART support, not a media issue. – TooTea Apr 28 '20 at 10:34
  • Also since the drive says its size is exactly 2^64 minus 512 bytes. That's not a random gibberish number, that's the drive controller being weird. Bad sectors won't cause the size to be wrong... unless the controller is programmed to report the wrong size when it has too many bad sectors (in which case WTF) – user253751 Apr 29 '20 at 13:15
3

Debian 5.5? That's a really old version so you may have hit upon a bug in lsblk where it's showing some max value for a dead drive. The drive does appear to be dead from the log you've attached.

user409132
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    5.5.13-2 is the kernel version, I am on Bullseye (Debian 10). I am hesitant to think the drive is dead since many of the issues appear to be directly related to the atypical size of the drive, although it is possible the origin of that issue is related to something unfixable. – Brayden Freitas Apr 27 '20 at 21:31
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    those read/write errors in the dmesg output point to a dead drive. – user409132 Apr 27 '20 at 21:35
3

After running dd if=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=2, I got the output:

dd: error reading '/dev/sdc': Input/output error
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 0.00484632 s, 0.0 kB/s

so I think the drive is unable to be physically read even at the block level, and thus is dead. ddrescue reports only errors, supporting this, as well as the input from the two other answers.

Brayden Freitas
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    This is exactly what dmesg is trying to tell you. It reports read failures on the first four sectors while the kernel is trying to read the partition table from there. It could be just bad luck (a run of bad sectors at the start of the drive), but more likely this is a controller failure, given the command aborts in smartctl. You can try reading from a different part of the disk to confirm (add skip=somenumber to dd). – TooTea Apr 28 '20 at 10:39
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    You should post that content in your question, it is not an answer. – Patrick Mevzek Apr 29 '20 at 20:39
  • You can try recreating the partition table by scanning the disk especially if you know a little about how it was partitioned (rough sizes of partition, partition type, filesystem, etc.), and if only the beginning of the disk is failing but not the rest. – Patrick Mevzek Apr 29 '20 at 20:45
0

If it is the interface electronics that have died:

If you have an identical drive (maybe 2 of them bought at the same time), you can swap the electronics between the two drives and if it is in the interface, everything should be recoverable. After that, decide which drive you love the most.

boatcoder
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0

As others have said in comments (and I am unable to add a comment), see if you can remove the HDD from its USB enclosure housing, as carefully as possible (you may have to break plastic or worse).

I use a number of docking stations where you stick a bare drive in, typically vertically like a toaster. They can have USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt and other connectors.

Others have suggested USB to SATA adapters. These can have power on/off issues. (My preference is the docks.) I would not connect directly to your own machine yet.

Connect and hope for the best.

newyork10023
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