Problem
My external (USB) hard disk isn't detected correctly by the computer any longer. I want to recover its second veracrypted primary partition /dev/sdb2. I know exactly it's size and it's position on the HDD.
Moreover, I only have just enough space on my SSD to store that partition, but I don't have anywhere to store the rest of the HDD.
Causes
These events happened in the following order
- The HDD fell on the ground, but still worked afterwards. But there might be a hardware issue at stake.
- Created a 100GB ExFAT partition as
/dev/sdb4(My last permitted primary partition) - Tried to format
/dev/sdb4to make it ext4 with GParted. GParted had erased the previous partition ok, but it was stuck doing some writing. It was taking much longer than expected, so I tried to cancel it, but GParted just continued "working on it". I let it run overnight until I decided to kill it.
Since then it is no longer recognised by my system.
Diagnostic
Following these topics Cannot access disk, partition table broken and How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device?, I tried this diagnostic, but it looks worse than what the replies indicate.
After rebooting and plugging the hard drive in a different usb port :
$ ls /dev | grep sdb # only finds sdb a few minutes after plugging the HDD in. The rest of the commands are done after this step.
sdb
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
[Welcome message...]
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdb: No such file or directory
$ lsusb # This does manage to list my Western Digital hard drive
[...]
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 1058:10b8 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements Portable (WDBU6Y, WDBUZG)
[...]
$ sudo ddru_diskutility --inquiry /dev/sdb
ddru_diskutility 1.3 20141005
SCSI inquiry results:
Vendor ID= WD
Product ID= Elements 10B8
Product Revision= 1012
Serial Number= 10B8WXE1
$ sudo smartctl --all /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 r4324 [x86_64-linux-4.18.0-16-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, 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.
$ sudo smartctl --all -T permissive /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.6 2016-05-31 [...]
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: Sun Mar 24 19:46:05 2019 CET
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.
I had 3 working partitions on the disk, but they don't show up
Running ddru_diskutility --inquiry on dev/sda yields an extra paragraph with ATA identify device results.
Both TestDisk and PhotoRec don't recognise /dev/sdb
Notes
I only have my laptop with a single SATA plug, no USB stick, and just enough storage to hold the size of the partition I want to recover
Following the advice of this thread, I plan on testing it further by
- Buying a usb stick, install a live recovery tool on it
- Replace my computer's SATA SSD with the HDD I want to recover (remove the USB interface)
- Try to read my SSD in the usb enclosure to see if it is a failure on that end
I will also try to get a new HDD to back up my data on with ddrescue, but I was hoping that someone knew a way to make a partition recovery with what I am working with?
Partitions present on the HDD (how I remember it)
X : What I don't remember
The partition I want to recover is the one at the end of the HDD (sdb2)
| # | start (MB) | end (MB) | total size (MB) | following space (MB) |
|---|------------|----------|-----------------|----------------------|
| 1 | 1 | 4097 | 4096 | 0 |
| 3 | 4097 | 8193 | 4096 | 0 |
| 4 | 8193 | 110593 | 102400 | X |
| 2 | X | X | 20480 | 0 |
