[SOLVED] error with SSD : /dev/sda unrecognised disk label unable to mount, retrieve data possible ?

Phanerology · 11-09-2019, 05:35 PM

(note : if this post appears many times in hardware sections, I'm sorry, I have some issues with my account, I don't see my publications appearing even after nearly one hour, so I'm trying in the newbie section. My apologies if it seems messy :S )

Hi,

Since yesterday, I'm trying to figure out the issue that occurred with the data from my SSD.The device where I have the problem is usually not working on linux but windows10. As I failed to fix it from windows, I currently work on it from a flash usb linux mint.
Here is the problem :
After a win10 crash, I'm unable to find my SSD volume that is ment to be of 480GB. The OS was installed on it so I had to reinstall windows on an other HD that have no problem. The device itself is recognised by the BIOS, and even on disk manager and peripheries, I tried inverting SATA connections and the problem persists so I think its not a connection issue.
The disk manager on mint detects it as a 16kb HD, and says SMART is not supported. I cannot access to drive settings, as SMART Data & Self-Tests.
I tried to get more information installing smartmontools and libatasmart.
Here is what I get :
With libatasmart :

Code:

Device: sat16:/dev/sda
Type: 16 Byte SCSI ATA SAT Passthru
Size: 0 MiB
Model: [Sandisk Milpitas SSD]
Serial: []
Firmware: [0.00]
SMART Available: no
Quirks:
Awake: yes
ATA SMART not supported.

With smartmontools :

Code:

Device Model:     Sandisk Milpitas SSD
Serial Number:    [No Information Found]
Firmware Version: 0.00
User Capacity:    16,384 bytes [16.3 KB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   ATA/ATAPI-6 T13/1410D revision 1
Local Time is:    Sat Nov  9 21:07:00 2019 UTC
SMART support is: Unavailable - device lacks SMART capability.

what I get with fdisk -l :
(The dev/sda seems to be the only one problematic ?)

Code:

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/loop0: 1.8 GiB, 1925435392 bytes, 3760616 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/sda: 16 KiB, 16384 bytes, 32 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 5DBBFC28-A616-49F3-B5A7-6CBFBF92D1F3

Device          Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1          34      32767      32734   16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sdb2       32768 3702226943 3702194176  1.7T Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdb3  3702226944 3703310335    1083392  529M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sdb4  3703310336 3703515135     204800  100M EFI System
/dev/sdb5  3703515136 3907028991  203513856   97G Microsoft basic data

Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.


Disk /dev/sdc: 14.5 GiB, 15514730496 bytes, 30302208 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x65dbb3bc

Device     Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *        0 3924479 3924480  1.9G  0 Empty
/dev/sdc2         652    5323    4672  2.3M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


Disk /dev/sdd: 931.5 GiB, 1000170586112 bytes, 1953458176 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: C9A468EC-4818-4BC0-B57C-A8A818FB2CD4

Device          Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sdd1        2048 1031059455 1031057408 491.7G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sdd2  1031059456 1953456127  922396672 439.9G Microsoft basic data

Before re-installing windows and switching to mint, I also tried to identify it with diskpart but unsuccessfully. I only have my secondary HDD detected (on which all the data is ok).

I would like to know if there is a way to access again to SSD without formatting (I didn't tried to format the 16kb partition that appears on the disk manager, I don't know if it will help to something :S), or a way to recover the data from the SSD before (as I have some important data on it)?
I've found only one similar issue on the web (on this forum) but It didn't helped me that much to solve the problem:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...unt-it-827254/

I don't know if I'm assessing it rightly (I'm not very experienced), so I've tried to explain the situation the most clearly possible...

If you come with any idea to help solving this situation, thank you !

Temphelpme · 11-10-2019, 05:14 PM

Have you tried to use the live usb stick and just open the drive and back up the files with the file browser?

fatmac · 11-11-2019, 04:31 AM

It looks like the boot sector has been overwritten, to me, in which case you may be able to recover data by installing a new boot block.

http://www.linfo.org/superblock

Phanerology · 11-11-2019, 11:26 AM

Thank you for your answers !

Quote:

Have you tried to use the live usb stick and just open the drive and back up the files with the file browser?

I cannot open the drive as it is unable to mount :/

Quote:

It looks like the boot sector has been overwritten, to me, in which case you may be able to recover data by installing a new boot block.

http://www.linfo.org/superblock

OKay I'll try this. Just I'm not sure to see exactly how I am supposed to proceed. This is what I get when I try to identify the superblocks location :

Code:

$ sudo /sbin/dumpe2fs dev/sda | less
dumpe2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
/sbin/dumpe2fs: No such file or directory while trying to open dev/sda
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

I tried the command on other disks and get the same result. As I understand the superblocks, this may be caused by the fact that when the data has been overwritted, I was running under windows. Is there a superblock save copy equivalent made by windows ? Or am I doing something wrong ? Can It work If I create an ext2 file system ? Here is the filesystem :

Code:

$ df -hT |awk '{print $1,$2,$NF}' | grep "dev"
udev devtmpfs /dev
/dev/sdc iso9660 /cdrom
/dev/loop0 squashfs /rofs
tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm
/dev/sdb2 fuseblk nom

I dindn't tried to go further with creating ext2 file system for the sda/dev, caus I confess on this I'm quite lost.

rknichols · 11-11-2019, 12:14 PM

It's awfully suspicious that "fdisk -l" reports that the total size of /dev/sda is just 16 KiB. Wat does "hdparm -I /dev/sda" report (run as root)?

Phanerology · 11-11-2019, 12:22 PM

Hi, thanks for your answer !

Here is what I get

Code:

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
	Model Number:       Sandisk Milpitas SSD                    
	Firmware Revision:  0.00    
Standards:
	Used: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 1 
	Supported: 6 5 4 
Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	16383	1
	heads		16	4
	sectors/track	63	63
	--
	CHS current addressable sectors:         252
	LBA    user addressable sectors:          32
	Logical/Physical Sector size:           512 bytes
	device size with M = 1024*1024:           0 MBytes
	device size with M = 1000*1000:           0 MBytes 
	cache/buffer size  = unknown
Capabilities:
	LBA, IORDY(cannot be disabled)
	Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
	R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 1	Current = 0
	DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6 
	PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
	     Cycle time: no flow control=600ns  IORDY flow control=600ns
Commands/features:
	Enabled	Supported:
	   *	SMART self-test
HW reset results:
	CBLID- below Vih
	Device num = 0
Checksum: correct

rknichols · 11-11-2019, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phanerology

Code:

Configuration:
	Logical		max	current
	cylinders	16383	1
	heads		16	4

It looks like something might have set a Host Protected Area that covers most of the drive. What does "hdparm -N /dev/sda" report? You may have to use "hdparm -N p{value}" to restore the full number of visible sectors. See the manpage for hdparm for details and warnings.

michaelk · 11-11-2019, 12:40 PM

A quick search found several threads where a similar Sandisk SSD has died and either shows zero or 16 KiB for total size. You can try testdisk or other recovery utilities but probably the disk is unrecoverable.

Phanerology · 11-11-2019, 01:06 PM

Quote:

It looks like something might have set a Host Protected Area that covers most of the drive. What does "hdparm -N /dev/sda" report? You may have to use "hdparm -N p{value}" to restore the full number of visible sectors. See the manpage for hdparm for details and warnings.

Here is what I get :

Code:

sudo hdparm -N /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]:  70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 04 51 40 00 21 04 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]:  70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 04 51 40 00 21 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 max sectors   = 32/1(18446744072759607296?), HPA setting seems invalid (buggy kernel device driver?)

I'm not sure to understand how to use the -N p{value} setting, shall it correspond to the max sector number (252)?

Quote:

A quick search found several threads where a similar Sandisk SSD has died and either shows zero or 16 KiB for total size. You can try testdisk or other recovery utilities but probably the disk is unrecoverable.

I already sent yesterday a guarantee request to sandisk, since I have this disk only for one hear and a half. I pleasantly noticed that I was more organised than I thought and that I had mostly softwares inside of the SSD, actual data was on the HDD for which I do frequent saves on an external disk. Still some stuff has been lost but not the essential

Temphelpme · 11-11-2019, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phanerology

I pleasantly noticed that I was more organised than I thought and that I had mostly softwares inside of the SSD, actual data was on the HDD for which I do frequent saves on an external disk. Still some stuff has been lost but not the essential

That's what matters most! Best of luck getting a reimbursement.

rknichols · 11-11-2019, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phanerology

I'm not sure to understand how to use the -N p{value} setting, shall it correspond to the max sector number (252)?

Given that the query for the current visible sectors failed, there is no point in proceeding that way. As has been pointed out, it looks like a failed device and is unrecoverable.

Phanerology · 11-12-2019, 04:14 AM

Thanks for your help,
I've yet got a positive response from sandisk assistance and I'll get delivered the new SSD during the week. I wasn't suspecting it to be so quick and easy but I'll not complain

I guess I can mark the subject as solved.
Have a nice day !