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Disappearing USB drives

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  Disappearing USB drives Brian <usenetposting@patandbrian.org> - 2020-05-19 08:39 -0400
    Re: Disappearing USB drives Joe Beanfish <joebeanfish@nospam.duh> - 2020-05-19 14:13 +0000
      Re: Disappearing USB drives Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> - 2020-05-19 17:45 +0000
      Re: Disappearing USB drives mjb@signal11.invalid (Mike) - 2020-05-20 09:33 +0100
    Re: Disappearing USB drives jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) - 2020-06-28 02:37 +0000
      Re: Disappearing USB drives "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2020-06-28 13:45 +0200

#3418 — Disappearing USB drives

I guess posting here is a long shot in view of the amount of traffic
in the group, but what's to lose? 

I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
being accessed. I'm doing a backup (via sudo!) with a number of
recursive copy operations, and suddenly the copy will report that the
target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
drive in its output. 

The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives, two
Western Digital 8TB drives and a smaller Seagate 2TB driver which has
been mounted in an external USB enclosure. 

The cure to the problem is simple. Either dismount and remount the
drive, which fixes it immediately, or wait about 20-30 minutes, when
the problem fixes itself spontaneously, the files reappear and the
drive goes back to write access. 

The good folks in the Ubuntu hardware group are baffled (I'm running
the latest Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, V19.3, on an AMD Phenom x2
six-core desktop). Is there anybody left here with any ideas? 

Brian. 
-- 
This message has been sent from an invalid address
Replace 'Usenetposting' with my name to reply by e-mail. 

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#3419

On Tue, 19 May 2020 08:39:52 -0400, Brian wrote:

> I guess posting here is a long shot in view of the amount of traffic
> in the group, but what's to lose? 
> 
> I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
> being accessed. I'm doing a backup (via sudo!) with a number of
> recursive copy operations, and suddenly the copy will report that the
> target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
> that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
> has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
> drive in its output. 
> 
> The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives, two
> Western Digital 8TB drives and a smaller Seagate 2TB driver which has
> been mounted in an external USB enclosure. 
> 
> The cure to the problem is simple. Either dismount and remount the
> drive, which fixes it immediately, or wait about 20-30 minutes, when
> the problem fixes itself spontaneously, the files reappear and the
> drive goes back to write access. 
> 
> The good folks in the Ubuntu hardware group are baffled (I'm running
> the latest Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, V19.3, on an AMD Phenom x2
> six-core desktop). Is there anybody left here with any ideas? 
> 
> Brian.

Flaky USB port?
Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power
for the drives)?

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#3420

On Tue, 19 May 2020 14:13:16 +0000, Joe Beanfish wrote:

> On Tue, 19 May 2020 08:39:52 -0400, Brian wrote:
>> I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
>> being accessed.

> Flaky USB port?
> Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power for the
> drives)?

Both very possible causes. The best way to find clues about what is 
happening is probably to study the output of the command "dmesg".

regards Henrik

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#3421

In article <ra0phr$s56$1@dont-email.me>,
Joe Beanfish  <joebeanfish@nospam.duh> wrote:

>> report that the
>> target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
>> that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
>> has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
>> drive in its output. 

>Flaky USB port?
>Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power
>for the drives)?

Not enough reliable power from the *external* power supply if you *are*
using one :)

Having had an external USB/network NAS with a switchmode powerbrick
slowly go out of spec, such that the drive would work ok until you wrote
wrote wrote wrote wrote at it, and then it would suddenly decide to
spin down/up the drive and get confused ...

Can you hear what the drive is doing? Can you see the activity light
misbehaving (unusual loss of activity, or active light coming on
FULL and staying on ... )

Filesystems going read-only is often a defence mechanism when other
things are going wrong, so it's a symptom (not a cause).

Definitely check the output of dmesg (or /var/log/messages or syslog) 
from the point where you connected the drive, until the failure happens.
-- 
--------------------------------------+------------------------------------
Mike Brown: mjb[-at-]signal11.org.uk  |    http://www.signal11.org.uk

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#3423

> I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing'
> while being accessed.
> The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives,
> two Western Digital 8TB drives
> and a smaller Seagate 2TB drive

If the problem is happening while writing,
check the log with 'dmesg' for USB or drive errors.
That's the best clue for what's triggering the cascade of problems.

If the drive goes offline after being idle for 1/2 hour,
the drive is going into "power save mode",
something Linux knows nothing about.
My workaround was to put the drive on a Windows system
and using the mfgr's utility to set power-save to "never"
so the drive stays spinning.

-- jeffj
-- 

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#3424

On 28/06/2020 04.37, Jeff Jonas wrote:
>> I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing'
>> while being accessed.
>> The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives,
>> two Western Digital 8TB drives
>> and a smaller Seagate 2TB drive
> 
> If the problem is happening while writing,
> check the log with 'dmesg' for USB or drive errors.
> That's the best clue for what's triggering the cascade of problems.
> 
> If the drive goes offline after being idle for 1/2 hour,
> the drive is going into "power save mode",
> something Linux knows nothing about.
> My workaround was to put the drive on a Windows system
> and using the mfgr's utility to set power-save to "never"
> so the drive stays spinning.

man hdparm


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.

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