By default, all my downloads are directed to my external drive. However since last week trying to download anything crashes the disk. This means it’s not usable until I remount it: I get an error “couldn’t find this folder” when I open it in Dolphin and it will appear empty. This is solved by unmounting and remounting but next download will crash it again.
Before this, it would still crash but would take much longer and did without intervention, I could be idle for two hours, return and see the drive like this. Now it happens every time I download anything.
What sort of downloads?
An Arch .iso torrent to learn to install it on a VM. Broswer downloads do not crash my drive.
How full is the partition?
Half the space is free.
What filesystem are you using?
exFAT.
What temperature is the disk?
32°C
Have you run an fsck recently? If not, what does it report?
fsck from util-linux 2.38
exfatfsck 1.3.0
Checking file system on /dev/sda1.
File system version 1.0
Sector size 512 bytes
Cluster size 128 KB
Volume size 932 GB
Used space 449 GB
Available space 483 GB
ERROR: too long label (252 chars).
ERROR: invalid cluster 0xf6a13420 in clusters bitmap.
ERROR: invalid cluster 0xa19ee1a8 in clusters bitmap.
ERROR: invalid cluster 0x44672a4a in clusters bitmap.
ERROR: unknown entry type 0xb3.
Fix (Y/N)?
If I say Y it will ask the same question indefinitely.
Have you checked for bad blocks? If not, what does a test reveal?
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.18.5-zen1-1-zen] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
Have you checked disk health, if supported, with smartctl? If not, what does a check reveal?
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-5.18.5-zen1-1-zen] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Toshiba 3.5" DT01ACA... Desktop HDD
Device Model: TOSHIBA DT01ACA100
Serial Number: 79HBJS0MS
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000039 fdcd3566f
Firmware Version: MS2OA8L0
User Capacity: 1.000.204.886.016 bytes [1,00 TB]
Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Device is: In smartctl database 7.3/5319
ATA Version is: ACS-2, ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Mon Jun 20 21:37:51 2022 CEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x80) Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 7119) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
No Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 119) minutes.
SCT capabilities: (0x003d) SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 098 016 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0027 142 100 054 Pre-fail Always - 69
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0023 128 100 024 Pre-fail Always - 176 (Average 182)
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 5028
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0025 110 100 020 Pre-fail Offline - 36
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 8748
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1898
183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0033 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0
185 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 65535
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 244830371840
189 High_Fly_Writes 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0022 066 059 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Min/Max 25/34)
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 5983
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 5983
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 176 146 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Min/Max 19/41)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8332 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8320 -
# 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8317 -
# 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8308 -
# 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8292 -
# 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8277 -
# 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8269 -
# 8 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8265 -
# 9 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8255 -
#10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8252 -
#11 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 8241 -
#12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8196 -
#13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8187 -
#14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8178 -
#15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8172 -
#16 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8164 -
#17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8156 -
#18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8132 -
#19 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8121 -
#20 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8112 -
#21 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8105 -
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
Have you tried a different cable and port? If not, what happens if you try a different cable and port?
I haven’t tried those yet because I don’t have the unmount tools around but will tell tomorrow if this info is not enough.
This might well be key. Torrents create a lot of heavy random disk I/O and will stress a disk and the bus.
Unless you need to share this disk with Windows it will be worth trying a Linux-native filesystem to see if it’s more reliable. You could shrink the exFAT partition and create a Linux partition (ext4 or XFS would likely be the best options for testing), use that new partition for your torrent downloads, and then see if that helps.
Sadly I need Windows because Nvidia drivers are so bad sometimes. I looked the wires and everything is fine and working, there aren’t visible hardware flaws. And I don’t have a drive to transfer all my data which I would lose if I switched formats, but on the main drive torrents work just fine.
I am not saying it is the problem. But switching kernels is simple and is something else to emiminate. If you can download files, then great. If not, switch back and you are back to square one.