Hi everyone,
today I want to talk to you about a problem that I had to face.
For data storage of my T440p I used an old mechanical disk, with an external box. I chose the Sabrent (below) because it has the On / Off switch and the USB A / A cable.
Sabrent External HDD case 2.5"
Note:
- HDD works perfectly
- Sabrent HDD case 2.5 works perfectly
- Both have been tested on a different pc running linux mint
- HDD formatted using NTFS and empty for safety
- The mounting error came out on my Thinkpad T440p running the latest endeavouros-2020.04.11-x86_64.iso - Never updated by pacman -Syu
- Yes,I tried to mount it manually…without success
When i connected the external hard drive didn’t give any signal, kde plasma didn’t send any notification.
Disk was working,i felt the internal parts move.
To lists block devices,in a Terminal:
lsblk
immediately noticed the external disk /dev/sdb and a very strange thing. “Raid0”
sdb 8:16 0 298,1G 0 disk
└─md126 9:126 0 297,5G 0 raid0 <--- !!
└─md126p1 259:0 0 297,5G 0 part
(whaat?!!I have only one disk!)
From Wiki: “Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components (typically disk drives or partitions thereof) into a logical unit.”
To create/manage a software RAID array, package mdadm is needed. I didn’t created any RAID!
Asking for help on telegram, together with you guys,but especially with “Debdut Chakraborty” - @andanotherusername. (thanks!)
We did some tests in order to fix the problem.
Unplug the drive, wait for it to go away from drive list, then replug in, and wait for it to show up again. Then open a terminal:
dmesg | tail -n50 | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io
- Output using Linux kernel 5.6.3-arch1-1 HERE
-
Output using Linux kernel 5.4.35-1-lts HERE
(we switched to lts kernel for testing) - Output using another Pc running Linux Mint Xfce (HDD WORKS!) HERE
or another attempt typing:
systemctl status udisks2
Output:
- udisks2.service - Disk Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/udisks2.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-04-26 16:11:06 CEST; 1h 40min ago
Docs: man:udisks(8)
Main PID: 1069 (udisksd)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 4330)
Memory: 8.2M
CGroup: /system.slice/udisks2.service
└─1069 /usr/lib/udisks2/udisksd
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: Failed to read last sector (625139710): Argomento non valido
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet,
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...),
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: or a wrong device is tried to be mounted,
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: or the partition table is corrupt (partition is smaller than NTFS),
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: or the NTFS boot sector is corrupt (NTFS size is not valid).
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: Failed to mount '/dev/md126p1': Argomento non valido
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: The device '/dev/md126p1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
apr 26 16:14:43 kaitas udisksd[1802]: partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
until now unfortunately we have not been able to find someone who had experience with RAID,to understand the matter.
At this point i was a little resigned to having fake Raid0,started to “play” with mdadm
And…i got a solution 
- Opened a terminal:
sudo mdadm --stop /dev/md126
lsblk
Output was:
sdb 8:16 0 298,1G 0 disk
no trace of Raid0
- then using Gparted:
sudo gparted
it shown the HDD with FS ataraid, i’ve formatted using NTFS,then i set FS label like device name.
Now press “partition”–>mount
You’ll recive a notification: new device conneceted
for confirmation opened a terminal:
lsblk
Output was:
sdb 8:16 0 298,1G 0 disk /run/media/adu/HDD320GB
hope it will be useful
Adu
