I've been searching and searching for how to diagnose what's going on with my WD 1 terabyte drive. It's the second one I've owned, not a whole lot on it, but I don't want to kiss the data goodbye if I can help it.
I have had it for a month, never had a problem with another I've had for about 3 years just like it.
Suddenly tonight I clicked on it in a file window and it winked out. Tried unplug/plug it back, reboot, nothing. I'm a dead newbie even after 10+ years of Ubuntu-ing cause I've never had a drive fail.
I did run dmesg and isolated this in a terminal window mostly all in red which jumped out at me as possibly "very bad":
All kinda Greek to me.

In the olden days when I was a Mac person doing graphics I'd run into trouble and run Norton Utilities a lot. I've run Ubuntu for years adapting to its design tools like Gimp or Inkspace and never had to get under the hood of Ubuntu so to speak.

I can't figure out what if anything I can run to check the disk for errors or bad sectors and repair them or what to do next.

Any advise would be appreciated...

As I am not a dedicated expert I may be wrong, but that looks to me like it could be one of two things.
It could be a drive failure, and some drives have been known to fail quickly while others run continuously for years.
It could also be the enclosure, because the enclosure includes electronics to interface between the USB and the drive (probably sata).
A third, though less likely possibility, would be the drive power supply. A marginal or unstable power supply can do wonky things.

Those failures seem possibly electronic related since the drive is seen, recognized, and configured but communication is too slow.

If possible I would first try that disk on another machine to see if it will work there.
Then, if it fails on the second machine I would see if it can be returned for replacement.
If not then I would open the drive enclosure and try reseating all the connections, just in case something is not cleanly plugged in.

AFAIK WD has a warranty on all their HDDs and worst case, as long as you have proof of purchase, you should be able to get a replacement. (before you open the enclosure if it was purchased as a single unit) In my experience almost everything of that sort has a minimum of 90 days replacement with many of 1 year or more.

Some non-destructive commands you might try from the command line after plugging the drive in would be
"ls /dev" (it seems to have been seen as /dev/sdc with partition /dev/sdc1 from dmesg)
"mount" (to see if partition /dev/sdc1 has been already mounted for you)
If it has already been mounted then "ls /mount/path" would let you see if it is readable.
If proven readable above then you can use the command line to try and copy your data for safekeeping.

If the drive is seen in /dev but is not readable then you might try the "smartctl" commands available in smartmontools and run a drive self test as well as seeing what errors are reported.

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I would first try opening the enclosure if you can do so non-destructively as any warranty service will likely include the provision that your data is gone (because they almost certainly will not 'fix' anything - they'll just send you a new/refurbished unit and trash the one you send back). It's just a normal SATA drive in there, hooked up with (probably) the cheapest possible USB<->SATA bridge money can buy, in the worst ventilated enclosure available. If the drive won't mount when run as a normal SATA device, or in a SATA dock or some such similar, then decide if dealing with the warranty hassle is worth your time.

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I'm not sure what I'd be looking at if I could open it. I don't know if you've seen one of these Western Digital terabyte drives but the enclosures are slimmer and smaller than typical SATA laptop drives. My guess is if you pry it open you're looking at the raw platter and arm or multiple instances of and whole thing is epoxied in there never ever meant to be opened or put back together if you did. I also am just a graphic design guy so I don't have any "bridge" hardware or would know what to do with it without a YouTube tutorial.

I was hoping for a graphical user interface app in Ubuntu to see if it could mount it. KDiskFree can see it but not force it to mount.

As computersavvy says, try it on a different computer and see if it works.

Is it plugged into its usual USB port or did you plug it into a different one? Some USB ports don't supply as much power as others, try a different port in your system. It's seen and appears to spin up so maybe not that.

Opening the case won't be down to platters, heads and actuator arms, disks are sealed units manufactured in dust proof rooms as the heads fly at micron levels from the platters. Inside your enclosure will be a very small board with some cabling attached to connect the disk which will probably be a SATA drive to a USB port. This converts the drive from SATA to USB. All you could really do with this is reseat the cable from the drive to the board but... The drive is already identified so reseating would be a long shot

Do you mean that the ready light went out? Is it still spinning? can you hear it or feel vibrations from it?

I'm clutching at straws now I'm afraid.

Play Bonny!

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No it won't be 'raw platters' or anything that wild, and there's nothing to fear - it will be a SATA drive, 2.5" form factor. You would either connect this to the SATA port on your computer, or if you have a USB->SATA dock or similar device. Troubleshooting does sometimes require more than GUI. As far as GUI apps, what does Gnome Disk Util ('Disks' in Ubuntu) show? Will it read SMART status from the drive, and if so, what does that show?

As far as "with a youtube tutorial" that's not hard to find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv-gF8yxJgI

Once you have the drive free, like I said, either connect to a free SATA port on your computer, or drop it into a dock.

The big question you need to answer for yourself is what is more important: the potential to get data back from the drive, or to get a working device? If you can live without the data, just pursue the warranty angle (or throw it in the trash and buy a new one if the price isn't an issue). If you need the data, you may need to leave your comfort zone a little bit to get there, but there's nothing to fear as long as you take your time with it.

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The drive may not be a standard 2.5" laptop SATA drive. Looks like the USB SATA bridge is built onto the drive in the posted thread.
Opening the case might not be helpful.

https://superuser.com/questions/5814...hings-i-can-do up

It depends on the USB bridge as to whether or not S.M.A.R.T data is accessible from USB. Try using smartctl and see what happens. You have not posted if the data on the drive must be recovered.

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Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I did muddle about with smartctl commands in the Terminal for a while last night having absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing while watching election results. One thing Ubuntu command line stuff seems to do is protect me from myself. Nothing I did made the slightest difference. Or harm. I'm old enough to have a latent fear I will inadvertently cause a WarGames disaster when I type in terminal windows.

I've been busy all morning into the afternoon with other stuff. A lot of people around my circle are dealing with a lot of personal problems and I've spent a few hours being a virtual shoulder to cry on.

On top of that another interruption was that I'm a rural electric coop customer and guys from Oklahoma are out today wiring us up with high speed fiber internet as guinea pigs for a roll out of the service so yay, good-bye 15 years of crappy DSL.

I did look the YouTube tutorial about opening the enclosure even though mine seems about half as slim as the example and not made to snap apart like that one.

Most of everyone's excellent and appreciated advise is kinda over my head here. When it comes to hardware or exotic command line stuff I'm as dumb as Forest Gump.

This is quite a come-down when in my youth my tech savvy included being the miracle worker who could hook up complicated stereo equipment or make the VCR stop flashing 12:00.

I went to Western Digital's warranty site and the draconian instructions and terms and shipping procedures were enough to make me say fuckitall (pardon moi my French) and decide to toss the thing rather than do a handstand for my $50 back.

I closed an update window from the system announcing my software is now up to date. Well, I have that automagically going for me. I closed a few windows and there was an open file system window and low and behold BOTH my Passport Drives show up in the side column. I hadn't done ANYTHING and it wasn't there last night last I looked. I haven't touched it, moved it, changed a thing or even restarted the computer.

I clicked on its icon, opened files, and so on and it's like it never happened. The only thing that happened was the automagic software update some time in the night. Otherwise I'm down to poltergeists and gremlins for the change.

So I'm clearing out space on the old Passport drive ruthlessly to copy over files from the new one in case it does a disappearing act again.

Some time traveler once observed sometimes inexplicable explainable things happen in the Universe and we call them miracles.

It's either that or another glitch in the Matrix...

It's an Ubuntu feature that I've had next to no problems using it over the years I rarely even visit a tech board with any question, much less a problem.

I can't express how grateful though I am to everyone who replied and as the country convulses angrily over election results I still never fail to marvel at the kindness of strangers on tech help boards over the years.

I often stop and think, faith in humanity restored.

Thank you never seems adequate.

I'm glad things 'started working' - the 're-appearing drive' makes me wonder if the 'issue' is the available power over the USB port. For devices that are purely USB powered this can be a concern if you have a lot of devices hooked up (e.g. you have two drives). I agree with the idea of copying everything as-possible due to the concern over the drive's specific longevity, but I would also try to 'push on it' (after you save your data!) to see if you can either replicate the error or ensure it doesn't drop out again. To that end, try it on a different USB port or as the only USB device on a given hub/connector (as realistically possible - I know a great deal of modern peripherals are USB and some you probably cannot live without, like a keyboard), assuming it 'drops out' again that is. You may also open Disks in Ubuntu and see what the SMART status reports (also look at what temperature is reported, if available - it could be that its overheating in its little enclosure; I've at least seen that in some NAS devices in the past).

ElvisGump,

I am pleased to hear that the WD drive now appears to be behaving itself.

One easy way to check its health is to install gsmartcontrol.



Short and extended self-tests are available, with the output either being viewed or saved.

Right click on WD drive > Perform test > Extended self-test (30 minutes).

Read the output and if items #5 or # 197 are not zero, then you probably have a problem with that drive.

You can try asking also from here: https://community.wd.com/t/hard-drive-diagnostics/27201

Or try any of these tools to check: https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?lang=en&p=3

or check out smartmontools package for your distro.

Thanks for the additional tips guys. Im gonna check out those tests soonest to see what they say. The problem drive still running normally for now as is its older brother. I'd actually like to see bow to change their names because both show up as "My Passport" when mounted in the side file browser frame. I've been busy with other stuff and just haven't gotten back to this.

You can change the label for one or both drives. Gparted is the easiest way to do that if you're not proficient in the terminal.

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Well, I'm back in this same puddle again after the problem seeming to solve itself.

I had even figured out how to rename the two Passport drives as had as Passport 1 & 2. And through multiple restarts for system updates they worked fine for the past few weeks. Then the last restart, de nada on the same newer drive. Won't show up in Disks, won't come back despite switching USB ports they are plugged into directly to the laptop, swapped their identical cables, powered everything down, waited more than an hour and started everything back up.

I've run SMARTCTL again but I lack the specific knowledge of what to make of the results. I see the running Passport drive, my internal hard drive and a thumb drive, but nothing else.

I used iso files stored on it in the last 24 hours to create a Windows 8.1 boot disk for an old Acer laptop whose internal drive has failed, my only other working computer at the moment. I've got it partly disassembled to install a new hard drive.

I wish I knew what the heck was going on with this drive.

You may have a dead drive. They do die.