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I get the following error over and over: (about every 2 seconds)

blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector ######### op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0

I read some other posts here that suggest my hard drive is about to die or become totally unreadable.

ls is incredibly slow to respond but eventually shows my files are there but I'm not sure if I can actually load them.

These are important files I cannot afford to lose.

If this thing is about to crumble, I know I have a very limited working window in which to retrieve my important files.

I've read https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools , but I'm not exactly sure about how to go about this?

I did install smartmontools (took about 20 minutes) and it's smartmon capable.

How do I recover my data?

Update:

Per Ray's suggestion, I read How to mount a hard disk as read-only from the terminal and am considering using:

sudo mount -o ro,noload /dev/sda1 /media/2tb

But if the error message includes0x0:(READ) and it's a problem with reading the disk, how will mounting it read only help?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

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    Smartmontools, as the link above says, is to "test hard drives and read their hardware SMART statistics". You're way passed that. Your hard drive has failed and installing a tool that tells you that your hard drive might fail is not very useful any more. You should probably stop playing with it and just mount it as read only and copy files out...
    – Ray
    Nov 5, 2021 at 2:50
  • @RAy Thank you for your quick and kind reply! How do I mount it as read only and copy files out?
    – YQ002lc2
    Nov 5, 2021 at 3:08
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    Take a look at this. As for copying, that is straight-forward. However, you might require some patience as the hard drive has already failed. First focus on the files or directories that you absolutely need since the more you access it, the more likely the situation will get worse.
    – Ray
    Nov 5, 2021 at 3:13
  • @Ray Thank you! So I will have to make a live USB and work from it. Also, the file system in question is encrypted, so I guess it will prompt me to enter the decryption key. It sounds like I'll want to use the noload flag. I really hope it doesn't get worse. There's no way to recover this data if it does. Thank you for your help!
    – YQ002lc2
    Nov 5, 2021 at 3:23
  • If it's a root file system, then yes, you will need a live USB. If encryption has been employed then it might be a little bit more complicated. The main point is that you should stop writing to it. And, you should accept the worst case scenario, especially if you haven't been doing periodic backups.
    – Ray
    Nov 5, 2021 at 3:44

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