Input/output error, is my HDD going out?

[ClutchDisc]

Hi guys, I have an extra 500GB HDD that came out of my laptop when I upgraded to an SSD. Well I was going to make it into an extra external drive, but when I went to format it, I keep getting this error:

Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sda:Input/output error

It won't let me reformat it at all, I have tried just about anything I can think of. It is just sitting as 500GB of unallocated space.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

 

[Donald]

Crystal Disk Info will tell you all you want to know, but I think you need to get it online first. Maybe the drive is not compatible with the external hard drive enclosure.

 

[ClutchDisc]

I ran a smart disk test on it and it came up fine for everything. It's not just with the external HDD enclosure, I tried it in a few computers as well.

 

[simple_gifts]

dude, sda is probably the internal drive.

How are you 'formattting it"; did you use fdisk -l to make sure you are using the correct drive?

If you do a df -k and print where the / or /boot parition is, if is says /dev/sda1, you are trying to format the wrong drive.

 

[FastGame]

Is your SATA mode in bios set to AHCI, if not try that.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
dude, sda is probably the internal drive.

How are you 'formattting it"; did you use fdisk -l to make sure you are using the correct drive?

If you do a df -k and print where the / or /boot parition is, if is says /dev/sda1, you are trying to format the wrong drive.


Sorry, that was from when I tried it as the only HDD off of a live USB! It really is /dev/sdc.

 

[simple_gifts]

What tool are you using to format it?

You should be doing this from the command line; all the GUI tools and automount software tends to get in the way.

You need to use mkfs; make sure no partitions are mounted.

Frankly, i would also use fdisk /dev/sdc and make sure all the partition info is correct.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Thanks, will try it from then CLI. I was using Gparted and Disks.

 

[ClutchDisc]

This is solved!! I just remembered that I had set a password on the HDD a while back when it was in my laptop, so I put it back in the laptop, turned the password off in the setup menu, and it works now!!

 

[simple_gifts]

Was that your primary HD in the laptop? If so, you need to repartition to get all the space back. (easiest thing to do)

There might be a swap partition = to the amount of RAM you have and a /boot partition.

"It works" is referring to repartitioning and making a new fs?

 

[ClutchDisc]

Yes it was the only HDD that I had in the laptop. I already reformatted it and installed Linux Mint on it. I decided to just use it as my primary HDD in my desktop since it is much quieter than the 10 year old drive that was in there!

 

[mpersell]

LUKS is an unforgiving witch.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: mpersell
LUKS is an unforgiving witch.

That's not what it was. It was the HDD password from the system BIOS.

 

[simple_gifts]

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Originally Posted By: mpersell
LUKS is an unforgiving witch.

That's not what it was. It was the HDD password from the system BIOS.


Why aren't you using encrypted LVM?

 

[ClutchDisc]

The password I had on the HDD was from a while back when I was just playing around in the BIOS and wanted to see how the HDD password worked. (Because I had never tried it before) I didn't really need it there, but I left it there anyway. That was back when I still was using Windows, before I made the switch to Linux. I'm not using encrypted LVM because I don't see a reason for my needs.