Hello,

I've got an annoying problem where my external hard drive accidentally disconnected as I was copying files to it (the drive is NTFS format so that my Windows machines can also read/write to it). My system is Manjaro Linux with kernel 4.19.

After reconnecting the drive, I wanted to delete those files and start from scratch. However, after running `rm -rf` on the directory in question, it threw several errors on some files in that directory. They look like this:

This is annoying. Is there a way to fix this without having to re-format the entire partition? Thank you very much!

When this happens, the target filesystem involved must be checked. ntfsfix can fix some NTFS errors using Linux, but more likely you'll need to have Windows do the check. You could try ntfsfix first, but if it was mine I'd go directly to Windows.

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^ I agree, use windows tool to fix NTFS problems!

besides...
this should not happen at all!
is there a problem with the cable connection?
has it happened more than once?
you must fix this.

PS:
native linux filesystems are much more robust with these problems!

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Could read/write permissions have a hand in this?

No, then you would get a "Permission denied" error, not an "Input/Output" one.
The latter mostly is an hardware (connection TO or bad spots ON the disk) error
but in this case could possibly be a file system one.

I join previous respondants as to run a chkdsk on this ntfs volume from Windows,
it knows better what could be wrong with that fs.

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If that was an ntfs filesystem I recommend you to try to repair it from windows. Also you may try to save/backup your important data (in read-only mode) before fixing it.

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I agree with the others; check an NTFS filesystem from Windows, not Linux.

I also agree with ehartman; an "Input/Output" error likely means there is something wrong with the hardware. You should check the hardware itself, post the output of the following command if you're not sure;

Replace "sdX" with the correct device node for the drive in question.

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Thank you everyone! Very informative tips, here's what I've found so far:

1. Running `smartctl -a /dev/sdb` (the drive shows up at `/dev/sdb`) gives me this error (!):

Using the `-T permissive` argument failed to give me any more information... It just gave me this:

2. I plugged the drive into a Windows computer, and chkdsk found and repaired issues (without being specific on what the issues were...).

3. I was able to read/write/delete the problematic files in question.

4. I believe the sudden disconnect I experienced was due to a very flimsy USB 3 "micro B" connector on the hard drive enclosure of my Seagate external hard drive. A slight movement would essentially eject it! Are there USB 3+ external hard drives with more robust connectors????

So, here are a couple follow up questions:

a. @ondoho mentioned that Linux filesystems are more robust. Which specifically? Or are they all generally better? My goal is for this external hard drive to be read/writable from Windows systems, too. Is there an option that is better than NTFS??? (I didn't use FAT32 because it doesn't support large files)

b. smartctl couldn't access my external hard drive, is that a very bad sign???

Thank you for your help!

i suspected as much.
probably yes.

I can say from experience that I had many unclean shutdowns with ext3 and ext4 systems and work just continued after a reboot.

unfortunately my expertise ends there.


can happen with usb drives.
you could try to take the drive out of the enclosure and directly connect it to the motherboard.

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You have a couple of options;

1) Use a filesystem that both Windows and Linux have support for, such as FAT32 (but as you say, it will be limited to files no more than 4GiB in size), or keep using NTFS, but you will need to have the ntfs-3g drivers installed on Linux - not all Linux distributions have the ntfs-3g drivers installed by default. Just install the ntfs-3g package in that case.

2) Install a file system driver for a Linux based file system on Windows.

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Understood, thanks again! Good to know that the smartctl failure is not necessarily a bad sign, though I should find a better external drive next time. Will mark thread as solved for now.