Repair and reset drive corrupted by formatting/initialization from different OS

Stefan

5/2/24, 5:23 PM

I have a dual-boot setup on my PC with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04. This PC contains a HDD, which I used as a SteamLibrary for Windows.

I recently wanted to experiment with Gaming on Ubuntu and tried adding it as a SteamLibrary there as well, but this had some issues. I therefore tried to format the disk to use it in a different way via GParted, but something went wrong and doing anything with the drive now yields I/O errors. Ubuntu's "Disks" also assesses "Disk is OK, 64736 bad sectors", which is odd, as the disk didn't have any problems beforehand.

I tried recreating the file system with wipefs and creating a new filesystem via GParted, but get I/O errors from Libparted. I also tried to initialize the disk via Windows and create a partition, but that didn't work either.

fsck complains about a corrupted superblock:

fsck from util-linux 2.37.2
e2fsck 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
ext2fs_open2: Bad magic number in super-block
fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
 or
    e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

Found a dos partition table in /dev/sda

I now have a disk on which I am unable to create a filesystem or partition and there can't use it. Also my PC takes almost a minute longer to boot up, when it is connected. Is there any way to completely reset everything (not just format partitions, but probably build, what tells the PC the kind of file system, etc. from scratch) to make the disk usable again?

Unforunately, I am not well versed in the terminology and mechanics of these things that exceed creating, formatting, and deleting partitions.

Edit: I also tried replacing the SATA cable, which had no effect.

0 + 8

dual-boot

hard-drive

Stefan

5/3/24, 6:21 AM

On Windows I selected MasterBootRecord, on GParted I selected msdos. Does that answer the question? I'm afraid I haven't dealt with file systems extensively before.

Stefan

5/4/24, 11:31 AM

Yes, well, that's kind of my problem, I have no idea, what's happening, unfortunately. The disk I am talking about is physically separate from any of the ones that contain OSs, so it's not a supplementary partition. In essence, I seem to have fucked up something so both OS don't know how to deal with the disk and I don't know how to completely reset it so I can use it at least with one of the two OS

Stefan

5/5/24, 5:45 PM

It's a separate HDD (connected via SATA), which I used as a Steam Library. I am aware of the distinction between partition and disk. I have 4 interior physical disks.

Stefan

5/5/24, 5:48 PM

Main problem is that the partition table/file system/whatever broke and I don't know how to fix it, since the interplay between the two operating systems seems to leave both unable to do anything. It seems to be the case that this flagged every sector on the disk as "bad" (at least for Ubuntu). Therefore, I am asking if there is a way to completely reset everything, introduce a new partition table/file system and continue using the disk

Stefan

5/7/24, 1:04 PM

Ok, I see that my description wasn't clear enough. I don't care about the data. I tried formatting it, to use it in a different way. Something went wrong (I sometimes have issues with Windows not completely unmounting a partition, because of it's fast start stuff, so I assumed it was caused by that; that's what the "accessing" problem referred to). The disk worked fine before, but now Ubuntu's "Disks" tells me, it's full of bad sectors. I assume this prevents me from creating a new partition/file system on the disk and causes all these I/O errors. I was wondering, if I can undo this.

Nmath

5/7/24, 6:07 PM

You absolutely must disable fast startup if you're using Ubuntu and Windows in dual boot configuration. However, not doing this is not going to cause the drive to be physically damaged. It would not create bad sectors, which are not repairable. You probably need to use Windows disk tools to format this drive. If it can't be formatted in Windows either, then the disk is probably broken and needs to be replaced.

Stefan

5/8/24, 7:44 PM

yes, I realised that later as well and have done so now. Still wondering, how the disk went this bad this quickly then, but I guess, it's gone then

Nmath

5/8/24, 8:59 PM

Hardware tends to fail on a [bathtub curve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve). I'd definitely try to format the disk with few different disk tools before giving up completely, but generally if you can't format using Windows' disk manager and one or more Ubuntu tools don't work either (gnome-disk-utility, gparted, KDE partition manager, etc), it's typically due to a hardware fault.

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