What about after plugging it in, waiting 10 seconds, and then:
sudo dmesg | grep Quirks
(Capital Q in the grep)
sudo dmesg | grep Quirks:
[ 1078.313114] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: Quirks match for vid 125f pid a35a: 800000
You say it’s not detected even in another computer? This is worrying. Does it even receive SMART commands while plugged in?
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc
No it didn’t. I tried Ubuntu 20.04 live on another computer, it didn’t detect the hard drive.
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.26-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Read Device Identity failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
Was there a power surge or sudden outage around the time you had the drive plugged into the computer? This is looking much worse than I thought and it appears to be a nasty hardware failure.
Do you hear any “tiny gears” moving the read/write head when you first plug in the USB drive? Do you hear any clicking, even if only “soft”?
Do you have a backup of the data that was on this drive?
As a last ditch from what I can fathom, remove the custom .conf, rebuild initramfs, and reboot.
sudo rm -v /etc/modprobe.d/99-disable-uas.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P
Then reboot, and try to issue the SMART query command again:
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc
No there wan’t any power surge or sudden outage; I have voltage protector.
Yes I can hear a tiny gear clicking when I unplug the hard drive. I don’t hear any other sound while it’s connected or when I try to plug it in.
I have partial backup and some of my data are really important to me which I don’t have backup of them.
Is there any hope? Do you have any recommendation how should I treat the hard drive since now?
This one is out of my league, but before I share some ideas, did you try the steps from above?
Here is the result.
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.26-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Smartctl open device: /dev/sdc failed: No such device
What about dmesg? There’s no reason why it doesn’t assign it sdc again, since you already have sda and sdb as internals.
After plugging it in:
sudo dmesg | tail -n 100 | grep sd
sudo dmesg | tail -n 100 | grep sd
[ 92.170267] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Spinning up disk...
[ 125.250414] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 125.250416] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense not available.
[ 125.250419] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
[ 125.250421] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 0-byte physical blocks
[ 125.250425] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 125.250426] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
[ 125.250429] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Asking for cache data failed
[ 125.250431] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 125.270677] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 125.270680] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense not available.
[ 125.270686] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
[ 128.458538] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 138.486704] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Spinning up disk...
[ 253.113609] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[ 253.113613] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Not Ready [current]
[ 253.113615] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Logical unit is in process of becoming ready
[ 253.113619] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
[ 253.113620] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] 0-byte physical blocks
[ 255.119123] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[ 257.124852] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Asking for cache data failed
[ 257.124856] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 263.157616] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdc] Spinning up disk...
Even after that, smartctl won’t work on /dev/sdc? 
I don’t know why but smartctl has new result instead of previous.
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.26-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Read Device Identity failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
This is looking more and more like a hardware failure, and I’m wondering if it’s a coincidence it started happening after/during a Manjaro update, or something about that process triggered this.
What is the brand and model of this USB drive? Unless someone else drops in this discussion with other ideas, this is what I would do if it happened to me:
- Discard the drive and resort to a backup, and purchase another drive to become the “new” backup, or…
- Pry apart the USB plastic enclosure and try to remove the internal SATA drive within, then plug it into a new enclosure, or SATA-to-USB adapter, or inside my PC to access and copy all of the files to a new drive
Remember, this is my thought-process, so someone else might actually be more familiar with this specific problem.
The large “desktop” drives are normally not soldered to the USB chipset, but the small “portable” ones can be a bit more complicated or even impossible to remove if they are soldered to the connector.
Heading out now, but what about,
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdc
(That’s a “capital i” not a lowercase L.)
This can at least rule out smartctl incompatibility with that particular drive, if that’s the issue.
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdc:
/dev/sdc:
ATA device, with non-removable media
Standards:
Likely used: 1
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 0 0
heads 0 0
sectors/track 0 0
--
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:
IORDY not likely
Cannot perform double-word IO
R/W multiple sector transfer: not supported
DMA: not supported
PIO: pio0
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc:
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.26-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Read Device Identity failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.
The hard drive brand and model is A-DATA HD650.
Do you think the data wasn’t ruined and it’s possible to retrieve the data?
Even hdparm is showing “0” for drive size and giving strange readouts.
One final clue, before you try anything else…
On your Windows 10 computer, plug in the USB drive, and then hit WINDOWS-KEY + R and run this command:
diskmgmt.msc
Look at the bottom pane. You should see a listing, such as Disk 0, Disk 1, CD-ROM 0, and etc.
Do you see your USB drive listed? How “large” does Windows 10 claim it is? If you see it listed, do not do anything to it! Don’t try to “repair” or “scan” or “format” or anything at all.
I attached a screenshot of what this might look like under Windows 10. My external drive is 4TB, and the entire size is reflected under Microsoft’s Disk Management.
I plugged in the hard drive and opened disk management on windows 10. It just kept showing Connecting to Virtual Disk Service...
State changed quickly when I ejected the drive and show this result:
I tried to reconnect the drive but nothing happened.
I’ve done following steps to gather more data:
sudo suecho “options usb-storage quirks=125f:a35a:u” >> /etc/modprobe.d/99-disable-uas.confrmmod uas usb-storagemodprobe usb-storage quirks=125f:a35a:usudo mkinitcpio -Preboot
when I ran fdisk -l I’ve noticed something(I don’t know if it’s related to subject):
...
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
...
usb-devices:
T: Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=5000 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 3.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 9 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=125f ProdID=a35a Rev=95.01
S: Manufacturer=ADATA
S: Product=HD650
S: SerialNumber=402048361023
C: #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=896mA
I: If#=0x0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
lsusb -t:
/: Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
|__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 5000M
/: Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/9p, 480M
|__ Port 5: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 5: Dev 2, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 6: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
|__ Port 6: Dev 4, If 1, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
/: Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/2p, 480M
|__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/8p, 480M
|__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 3: Dev 3, If 2, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc -T verypermissive
smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-5.10.26-1-MANJARO] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
Read Device Identity failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: [No Information Found]
Serial Number: [No Information Found]
Firmware Version: [No Information Found]
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: [No Information Found]
Local Time is: Sat Apr 10 12:49:53 2021 +0430
SMART support is: Ambiguous - ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE words 82-83 don't show if SMART supported.
SMART support is: Ambiguous - ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE words 85-87 don't show if SMART is enabled.
Checking to be sure by trying SMART RETURN STATUS command.
SMART support is: Unknown - Try option -s with argument 'on' to enable it.
Read SMART Data failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Status command failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: UNKNOWN!
SMART Status, Attributes and Thresholds cannot be read.
Read SMART Error Log failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
Read SMART Self-test Log failed: scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)
Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported
and lspci -nv | grep 125f:a35a didn’t show anything.