Shared HDD suddenly goes missing

  • Hi,


    I installer OMV on a raspberrypi and used 2 external, self-powered, HDD, 1TB each.


    Suddenly this morning I noticed I can't access 1 of my HDD. I can see it's listed under physical disk (/dev/sda), however, it's not detected in File System, filesystem ext4, but no label, no info on total, used, and available space, it's not mounted, though referenced, and its status is missing.


    What can I do to check and try to get back the content of the missing HDD? A lot of data inside so I prefer if I could try non destructive method first.


    Thank you,


    update 1: reattached the external hdd to omv, but now it doesn't detect the partition at all, listed under /dev/sda/ but no partition

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    If you're using individual drives in docks:


    - Try swapping drives into the other drive's dock .
    - Power on the R-PI with only one drive at a time.
    - Replace the USB power supply for the R-PI. (A samsung galaxy smart phone supply, at +2 Amps, will stand in for a test.)


    When you say "external" drive, at you talking about something with it's own enclosure?
    Most drives with their own shell, along with internal drive models, have free utilities available on their manufacture's website. (WD, Toshiba, Seagate, etc.


    Get these utilities from the OEM, load them on a Windows PC, connect the drive to a USB port, and do non-destructive tests and checks. (Note Windows will not detect the format on the drive. This doesn't matter for looking at SMART attributes and data, and for running non-destructive tests.)
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    If you recover your data, take a look at this guide and consider doing simple Rsync backup. A section on Rsync backup, over the network, is planned for the winter months.
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    Note that putting two drives on an R-PI is a real stretch. (I use an R-PI as a backup device, with a single 4TB drive connected.)


    Have you considered upgrading? There are several models of SBC that are inexpensive and out perform the R-PI. Also using an old laptop or PC would make for a better homeserver.

  • 2 separate external WD hdd, 1TB each, self powered so not a burden to the raspberry right? but I will try changing the power supply etc.


    I consider upgrading but worried about the power consumption since I leave the pi 24/7 to serve movie and download torrent files

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    You're right be concerned about 24x7 power consumption. While an old Laptop would be better than an old PC (for power consumption), either of the two will consume far more power than an SBC. An SBC can actually pay for itself in power savings, over time.


    Take a look at this thread - Energy Efficient Arm Platforms - you might find something you like. When my R-PI or the drive that's attached to it, dies, I'm considering the Rock64 or the newer RockPro64 for good performance and 2 drive attachment.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    reattached the external hdd to omv, but now it doesn't detect the partition at all, listed under /dev/sda/ but no partition

    ssh into the Pi and do fdisk /dev/sda this will give the partition table on that disk

  • ssh into the Pi and do fdisk /dev/sda this will give the partition table on that disk

    it says Device does not contain a recognized partition table. Does this mean the partition table has somehow corrupted and became unreadable? I didn't realize using 2 HDD on raspi can cause HDD problem since I thought each HDD is self powered and not drawing power from the raspi itself. Am I wrong?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    it says Device does not contain a recognized partition table. Does this mean the partition table has somehow corrupted and became unreadable

    That would be my understanding yes, but as @flmaxey has been assisting you I suggest you wait for him to confirm it.


    I didn't realize using 2 HDD on raspi can cause HDD problem since I thought each HDD is self powered and not drawing power from the raspi itself. Am I wrong?

    Again my understanding of the Pi (I have 2, 1 runs Kodi and the other runs omv for rsync) is that whilst this is a usable SBC it's limitations kick it into touch. By using 'powered' usb devices just means that the usb is not drawing power from the usb port, unlike a flash drive.
    The downside to the Pi is that the Ethernet and USB share the same controller this is/can be a serious bottleneck, and in your case using 2 usb's and ethernet would be like trying to put a square peg into a round hole!
    For instance my omv pi uses 1 powered usb drive and ethernet and just runs rsync overnight when I run it manually...so far "touch wood" (that's an british saying) it hasn't failed :)

  • That would be my understanding yes, but as @flmaxey has been assisting you I suggest you wait for him to confirm it.

    Again my understanding of the Pi (I have 2, 1 runs Kodi and the other runs omv for rsync) is that whilst this is a usable SBC it's limitations kick it into touch. By using 'powered' usb devices just means that the usb is not drawing power from the usb port, unlike a flash drive.The downside to the Pi is that the Ethernet and USB share the same controller this is/can be a serious bottleneck, and in your case using 2 usb's and ethernet would be like trying to put a square peg into a round hole!
    For instance my omv pi uses 1 powered usb drive and ethernet and just runs rsync overnight when I run it manually...so far "touch wood" (that's an british saying) it hasn't failed :)

    rsync means it makes backup yeah? how do you use it? I'm thinkin of using omv for office to backup some important files.


    didn't know about pi bottleneck, all I did was following an online guide how to use raspi for home NAS haha. but now I do. Hence I'm considering an upgrade. been feeling copying files etc with raspi is so slow, but I thought that's just how SBC is.


    fun fact: touch wood is an asian saying too. means hopefully it won't happen, right? didn't know british has that saying too

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    rsync means it makes backup yeah? how do you use it?

    Yes it makes of copy of your files onto another drive i.e. external drive, my pi uses rsync to backup my nas, rather than connect the drive direct to the nas box. The only difference doing it that way is you use the remote mount plugin on the pi.... @flmaxey helped me set this up. But it works! I know he also uses rsnapshot as well, but if you're looking at replacing your Pi it would be a good candidate to reuse in your office.


    didn't know about pi bottleneck, all I did was following an online guide how to use raspi for home NAS haha.

    Yep, you can join others that thought the same :) it's Ok, but I use it for a specific job, would I use it to share files as a nas, No!!


    fun fact: touch wood is an asian saying too. means hopefully it won't happen, right? didn't know british has that saying too

    The definitive british touch wood: "said in order to prevent a confident statement from bringing bad luck". So in essence the same :)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    can we go back to why my external hdd suddenly has no partition first? lol

    Have you tested your drive(s) with free manufacture test utilities? Drives fail all the time. If it's dead or dying, nothing can be done about it.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    ssh into the Pi and do fdisk /dev/sda this will give the partition table on that disk

    fdisk seems to have some limitations; from the man page:
    "fdisk doesn't understand GUID Partition Table (GPT) and it is not designed for large partitions. In particular case use more advanced GNUparted(8)."

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    fdisk seems to have some limitations; from the man page:"fdisk doesn't understand GUID Partition Table (GPT) and it is not designed for large partitions. In particular case use more advanced GNUparted(8)."

    So you would use parted -l /dev/sda but fdisk will work on drives up to 2TB...won't it?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Have you tested your drive(s) with free manufacture test utilities? Drives fail all the time. If it's dead or dying, nothing can be done about it.

    Could you not use smartctl on drive? from the cli that would check the drive.

  • So you would use parted -l /dev/sda but fdisk will work on drives up to 2TB...won't it?


    Tools from last century (like fdisk) often show their age and many of them simply are incompatible with the IT world that has evolved. So better rely not on tools but what the kernel sees:

    Code
    partprobe
    cat /proc/partitions
  • can we go back to why my external hdd suddenly has no partition first?

    Impossible without providing any information. In case you installed OMV on your device within the last 12 months the image is based on Armbian and by executing


    Code
    armbianmonitor -u

    support information will be uploaded to an online pasteboard service.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Could you not use smartctl on drive? from the cli that would check the drive.

    I suppose one could try it, it wouldn't hurt anything. However - since OMV doesn't see the partition (or data) I tend to doubt that the drive would respond to OMV's SMART queries.


    The OEM utilities I mentioned, generally speaking, state one of three things, good, bad, or failing. This is the first thing I'd do and, since we're talking about an external drive with a USB connection, plugging it into a Windows box for testing is easy enough.
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    Assuming the drive tests OK:
    On the troubleshooting side of, since we're talking about SBC's, there's no "repairing" anything. It's limited to attempts to isolate and replace.

    - Try swapping drives into the other drive's dock .
    - Power on the R-PI with only one drive at a time.
    - Replace the USB power supply for the R-PI. (A samsung galaxy smart phone supply, at +2 Amps, will stand in for a test.)

    If the power supply checks out; without a replacement R-PI, the only way to eliminate problems with the software on the boot drive (SD-card) is to rebuild.
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    BTW: @indragm to test your SD-card, to see if it has problems, here are links to a couple utilities. h2testw1.4 and SDFormatter.


    The process would be; with a fresh format of your card using SDformatter, test it with h2testw1.4 Unfortunately, this process is destructive.
    You really should have two cards (at least one for backup) but if you don't, this guide has a process for writing an image file of your SD-card to a PC, which could be restored after the test. (If errors are detected at any point, it would mean replace the SD-card and a rebuild.)

  • the old ways presented the op with information he understood

    Well, /proc/partitions is sufficient to get an idea what the kernel recognizes as partition. Using outdated tools will make things even worse since now the tool itself can interfere due to its own limitations. Fdisk is from 1983, the only reason it still gets recommended is since tutorials 'on the Internet' are 99% copy&paste of horribly outdated stuff.


    But of course neither fdisk, gdisk or /proc/partitions provide any clues why a partition that should be there isn't there. If there is any real information then it's in /var/log/syslog* or if the system has not been rebooted in between part of dmesg output (that's the reason dmesg stuff is contained in armbianmonitor -u support info upload)

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