Score:0

External hard drive gone

cn flag

I have a 2015 macbook air that I run as a home server. I have a segate drive with 4tb. The enclosure broke so I got a replacement on Amazon that's been working fine for over a month. I woke up this morning and it isn't showing up at all. I've tried two laptops, one running regular ubuntu and the other Ubuntu Budgie and neither will recognize it. The drive is spinning. I've tried all USB ports, turning the drive off and back on, restarting both computers, looking through a few terminal commands. It's just gone. Is there any hope for my hard drive? That thing is really important to me and I'll be super dissppointed if I lose all that data :(

Output of lbusb:

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05ac:8406 Apple, Inc. Card Reader
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ac:0291 Apple, Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 05ac:828f Apple, Inc. BRCM20702 Hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth)
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
in flag
Could you elaborate on "looking through a few terminal commands"? Did you use `lsblk`? Did you open GParted or Disks to see if there was a hint the drive could be detected? Which file system is being used on the disk?
Angie Thorstenson avatar
cn flag
Yes, I used lsblk and another I found searching that escapes me. I also tried gparted and it shows nothing. Not sure what you mean by which filesystem? Sorry I'm not brand new to linux but the drives/disks stuff still goes a little over my head
in flag
Could you [edit] your question to include the Terminal output of `sudo lsusb` while the external disk is plugged in and spinning? This may show *something* that can lead to further investigation
in flag
Well, that answers that. There’s no sign of the external device at all. This could mean a bad drive or a bad USB-SATA controller inside the disk enclosure. If it’s just a bad enclosure, you *may* be able to take the drive out and connect it to a different one. However, some “discount disks” are soldered to the USB adapter, making this impossible
Angie Thorstenson avatar
cn flag
I appreciate you taking a look. I'm probably just going to go ahead and get a new one. Is there ANY way to recover anything on it?
ru flag
@AngieThorstenson you can start by trying to connect to another device, if it isn't recognized there, then you'll have to get *another* enclosure and move the disk to that enclosure. If the disk is not recognized there, then the disk is broken and data recovery may not be possible. If the disk shows up it might then be possible to open the data, however we do need more information at that point.
heynnema avatar
ru flag
@AngieThorstenson Have you tried a different USB cable? BTW... moving the drive to a new/different enclosure might not make the drive accessible, as many times the internal USB->SATA convertor board forces a special format on the attached drive.
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