Two broken external disks after backup with cp

English Hardware
1

Hello altogether,

I have two broken harddisks after a backup this weekend. I noticed that the file transfer was really slowly. Then “cp” terminated with IO-errors.

When I try to mount them manually I get an error saying that the superblock is corrupted. Sometimes it does mount after a long period. I can see my files, but cannot read them.

“e2fsck” says on any block:

ext2fs_open2: Ungültige magische Zahl im Superblock
e2fsck: Superblock ungültig, Datensicherungs-Blöcke werden versucht ...
e2fsck: Ungültige magische Zahl im Superblock beim Versuch, /dev/sdb2 zu öffnen

Der Superblock ist unlesbar bzw. beschreibt kein gültiges ext2/ext3/ext4-
Dateisystem. Wenn das Gerät gültig ist und ein ext2/ext3/ext4-
Dateisystem (kein swap oder ufs usw.) enthält, dann ist der Superblock
beschädigt, und Sie könnten versuchen, e2fsck mit einem anderen Superblock
zu starten:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <Gerät>
 oder
    e2fsck -b 32768 <Gerät>

which basically means that all blocks are not readable due to a wrong magic number.

“xfs_repair” reports on the 2nd disk:

Phase 1 - Superblock finden und überprüfen...
Phase 2 - ein internes Protokoll benutzen
        - Null-Protokoll...
xfs_repair: libxfs_device_zero schreiben fehlgeschlagen: Eingabe-/Ausgabefehler

Cannot write device.

I used both disks frequenty before. Now both have errors in less that 12 hours. Can it be caused by my USB-port?

Can I somehow recover the data?

Any advice is warmly welcomed.

Thank You!
Simon

2

Is it part of an array?
If yes : Have a look at http://kevin.deldycke.com/2007/03/how-to-recover-a-raid-array-after-having-zero-ized-superblocks/
(s)he tells us to create the raid array again, mdadm sees the structure on disks
edit : added code

mdadm --assemble --force /dev/md0 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
3

Hi quinness,

thank you for your proposal.

Unfortunately they are not. They’re simple USB-3-harddrives. I should have added that.

Right now, I can’t get linux to find the sdb at all. Otherwise I would have posted the output of dmesg.

Here’s what I get

[15117.712231] usb 4-1: New USB device found, idVendor=174c, idProduct=5106
[15117.712243] usb 4-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[15117.712251] usb 4-1: Product: AS2105
[15117.712257] usb 4-1: Manufacturer: ASMedia
[15122.714352] usb 4-1: can't set config #1, error -110

Maybe this helps someone.

Thank you
Simon

Edit:
I’m running opensuse 13.2 on the standard-updated kernel 3.16.7-35-desktop

4

Looks like hardware problem check the USB port maybe. Two drives going at the same time seems unlikely but is possible. Same make model and age?? If you use USB hub look there also

5

:\ USB3…
Are those using uas.ko kernel driver??? Then blacklist and remove uas, and use usb-storage instead.
if you see uas somewhere when you execute

lsusb -t

Copied from : https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/508812-Cannot-disable-uas

>- by creating a custom file blacklist.conf in /etc/modprobe.d and blacklisting the module there
>- by adding a blacklist uas line in 50-blacklist.conf
>- by adding brokenmodules=uas to kernel’s boot parameters.
…
> remove it from the /lib/modules/something directory
…
> Also, you should run “mkinitrd” after blacklisting or removing the module

Reboot

6

@gogalthorp: No. They are two different harddrives, one is a Seagate, the other one unknown (maybe Western Digital or Fujitsu). I have two different cases,one from ASMedia, the other one unknown. The last one does work flawlessly with a third HP that I haven’t stressed with cp.

@quinness: Even though I couldn’t find any hint of using the uas-driver, I followed the instructions from the arch-linux-forum, blacklisted it, updated the init-ramdisk and rebooted. Unfortunately without success.

I noticed that I can sometimes mount the external disk(s) on one USB 2.0 port. I can then access some files, but after a few MiBs it stops working. I am not sure but I think I can access newer files better than older ones. Right now it doesn’t work at all. I will try it again after the next reboot and report it here.

I do have some questions:

  • is it save to use the 3rd HD on the USB 2.0 port?
  • Should I try to mount the HDs from a USB 2.0 case/cable/chip?
  • can I recreate the superblock with mkfs?

Thank you, Simon

7

Sorry, left out one part :shame:
This instruct oS to use usb-storage instead.

> create a file named ignore_uas.conf in the /etc/modprobe.d directory containing the following>

options usb-storage quirks=Vendor_ID:Product_ID:u

> (substitute your actual Vendor_ID and Product_ID obtained from the lsusb -v command).

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1428782#p1428782