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  • Disappearing USB drives

    From Brian@21:1/5 to All on Tue May 19 08:39:52 2020
    I guess posting here is a long shot in view of the amount of traffic
    in the group, but what's to lose?

    I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
    being accessed. I'm doing a backup (via sudo!) with a number of
    recursive copy operations, and suddenly the copy will report that the
    target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
    that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
    has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
    drive in its output.

    The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives, two
    Western Digital 8TB drives and a smaller Seagate 2TB driver which has
    been mounted in an external USB enclosure.

    The cure to the problem is simple. Either dismount and remount the
    drive, which fixes it immediately, or wait about 20-30 minutes, when
    the problem fixes itself spontaneously, the files reappear and the
    drive goes back to write access.

    The good folks in the Ubuntu hardware group are baffled (I'm running
    the latest Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, V19.3, on an AMD Phenom x2
    six-core desktop). Is there anybody left here with any ideas?

    Brian.
    --
    This message has been sent from an invalid address
    Replace 'Usenetposting' with my name to reply by e-mail.

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  • From Joe Beanfish@21:1/5 to Brian on Tue May 19 14:13:16 2020
    On Tue, 19 May 2020 08:39:52 -0400, Brian wrote:

    I guess posting here is a long shot in view of the amount of traffic
    in the group, but what's to lose?

    I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
    being accessed. I'm doing a backup (via sudo!) with a number of
    recursive copy operations, and suddenly the copy will report that the
    target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
    that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
    has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
    drive in its output.

    The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives, two
    Western Digital 8TB drives and a smaller Seagate 2TB driver which has
    been mounted in an external USB enclosure.

    The cure to the problem is simple. Either dismount and remount the
    drive, which fixes it immediately, or wait about 20-30 minutes, when
    the problem fixes itself spontaneously, the files reappear and the
    drive goes back to write access.

    The good folks in the Ubuntu hardware group are baffled (I'm running
    the latest Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, V19.3, on an AMD Phenom x2
    six-core desktop). Is there anybody left here with any ideas?

    Brian.

    Flaky USB port?
    Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power
    for the drives)?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Henrik Carlqvist@21:1/5 to Joe Beanfish on Tue May 19 17:45:49 2020
    On Tue, 19 May 2020 14:13:16 +0000, Joe Beanfish wrote:

    On Tue, 19 May 2020 08:39:52 -0400, Brian wrote:
    I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing' while
    being accessed.

    Flaky USB port?
    Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power for the drives)?

    Both very possible causes. The best way to find clues about what is
    happening is probably to study the output of the command "dmesg".

    regards Henrik

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  • From Mike@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Wed May 20 09:33:11 2020
    In article <ra0phr$s56$[email protected]>,
    Joe Beanfish <[email protected]> wrote:

    report that the
    target filesystem is read-only, and then a few attempted copies after
    that, the files will disappear, and it appears that the mount point
    has no drive mounted there if an ls -a is run, but df still lists the
    drive in its output.

    Flaky USB port?
    Not enough power on the port (if you're not using external power
    for the drives)?

    Not enough reliable power from the *external* power supply if you *are*
    using one :)

    Having had an external USB/network NAS with a switchmode powerbrick
    slowly go out of spec, such that the drive would work ok until you wrote
    wrote wrote wrote wrote at it, and then it would suddenly decide to
    spin down/up the drive and get confused ...

    Can you hear what the drive is doing? Can you see the activity light misbehaving (unusual loss of activity, or active light coming on
    FULL and staying on ... )

    Filesystems going read-only is often a defence mechanism when other
    things are going wrong, so it's a symptom (not a cause).

    Definitely check the output of dmesg (or /var/log/messages or syslog)
    from the point where you connected the drive, until the failure happens.
    --
    --------------------------------------+------------------------------------ Mike Brown: mjb[-at-]signal11.org.uk | http://www.signal11.org.uk

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  • From Jeff Jonas@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 28 02:37:30 2020
    I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing'
    while being accessed.
    The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives,
    two Western Digital 8TB drives
    and a smaller Seagate 2TB drive

    If the problem is happening while writing,
    check the log with 'dmesg' for USB or drive errors.
    That's the best clue for what's triggering the cascade of problems.

    If the drive goes offline after being idle for 1/2 hour,
    the drive is going into "power save mode",
    something Linux knows nothing about.
    My workaround was to put the drive on a Windows system
    and using the mfgr's utility to set power-save to "never"
    so the drive stays spinning.

    -- jeffj
    --

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  • From Carlos E.R.@21:1/5 to Jeff Jonas on Sun Jun 28 13:45:06 2020
    On 28/06/2020 04.37, Jeff Jonas wrote:
    I'm trying to find the solution to USB drives 'disappearing'
    while being accessed.
    The drives affected are THREE different external USB drives,
    two Western Digital 8TB drives
    and a smaller Seagate 2TB drive

    If the problem is happening while writing,
    check the log with 'dmesg' for USB or drive errors.
    That's the best clue for what's triggering the cascade of problems.

    If the drive goes offline after being idle for 1/2 hour,
    the drive is going into "power save mode",
    something Linux knows nothing about.
    My workaround was to put the drive on a Windows system
    and using the mfgr's utility to set power-save to "never"
    so the drive stays spinning.

    man hdparm


    --
    Cheers, Carlos.

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