I have some drives of various sizes, 1TB, 2TB etc. I am currently working with a 2 TB drive. I place it in a powered external USB-3 drive enclosure. I can see it in lsblk as the correct size (as SDA) , but the disk manager does not see /dev/sda, and fdisk only wants to let me create a 5 GB partition.

If I dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=400K status=progress writes 5 GB and claims my 2 TB drive (In this case) is full.

Is there a way to reclaim this drive? Any information on the drive is unimportant.

  • Piranha Phish@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why do you say “drive(s)”? Is this or similar happening with more than one drive?

    If the other drives are working fine, then you might already have your answer. If they’re not, it sounds like the enclosure.

    If you think it’s drive, try putting it in the freezer for an hour to see if anything changes. It wouldn’t be a permanent fix but, if the problem temporarily goes away, it’ll make clear that the problem is the drive, possibly due to add solder joints.

    • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some drives work fine. Some fail. Some work fine then fail later. But it seems hitting them with gparted to create a single ext4 partition works, brining a 5gb drive back from that state and allowing writes if I write to the partition. If I try to zero the raw device it still fails at 5gb.

    • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago
      smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.2.0-24-generic] (local build)
      Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
      
      === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
      Model Family:     Western Digital Green
      Device Model:     WDC WD20EZRX-00D8PB0
      Serial Number:    WD-WMC4M1881301
      LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 6042454e9
      Firmware Version: 80.00A80
      User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
      Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
      Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
      Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5319
      ATA Version is:   ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
      SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
      Local Time is:    Fri Jul  7 04:43:34 2023 PDT
      SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
      SMART support is: Enabled
      
      === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
      SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
      
      General SMART Values:
      Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                              was completed without error.
                                              Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
      Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                              without error or no self-test has ever 
                                              been run.
      Total time to complete Offline 
      data collection:                (27360) seconds.
      Offline data collection
      capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                              Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                              Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                              command.
                                              Offline surface scan supported.
                                              Self-test supported.
                                              Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                              Selective Self-test supported.
      SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                              power-saving mode.
                                              Supports SMART auto save timer.
      Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                              General Purpose Logging supported.
      Short self-test routine 
      recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
      Extended self-test routine
      recommended polling time:        ( 276) minutes.
      Conveyance self-test routine
      recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
      SCT capabilities:              (0x7035) SCT Status supported.
                                              SCT Feature Control supported.
                                              SCT Data Table supported.
      
      SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
      Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
      ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
        1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
        3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   177   173   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4141
        4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       4416
        5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
        7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
        9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   089   089   000    Old_age   Always       -       8602
       10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
       11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
       12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always       -       3624
      192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       100
      193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   088   088   000    Old_age   Always       -       338427
      194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   119   104   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
      196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
      199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
      
      SMART Error Log Version: 1
      No Errors Logged
      
      SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
      Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
      # 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      8602         -
      
      SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
       SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
          1        0        0  Not_testing
          2        0        0  Not_testing
          3        0        0  Not_testing
          4        0        0  Not_testing
          5        0        0  Not_testing
      Selective self-test flags (0x0):
        After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
      If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
      
  • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Here is a related question - when I was writing random or zeros to the raw device (/dev/sda) I was getting speeds of 1.7 or so mb / s now I am getting 25 mb/s writing to a file in the partition.

    Why the difference?

  • MisterDigital@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Have you tried it with a different enclosure or directly connected to your PC? My last two “faulty” HDDs actually just had a faulty controller in the enclosure. Drives were fine.

  • lynny@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Try in another computer if you have one. The fact dd is limiting you to 5GB though doesn’t sound good, not going to lie.