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I accidentally knocked a Seagatte USB external drive with a lot of important data on it. The connections were fine but it "stopped responding". I shut everything down and restarted. Now when I connect the drive, dmesg reports:

[  971.150838] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

[  971.397365] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd

[  971.413674] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=2321

[  971.413698] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1

[  971.413714] usb 2-1: Product: Expansion

[  971.413728] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Seagate

[  971.413742] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: NA4AHSB6

[  971.415663] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected

[  971.416551] scsi3 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0

[  972.419180] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Seagate  Expansion        0502 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6

[  972.420897] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

[  972.423066] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Spinning up disk...

[  973.425820] ....................................................................................................not responding...

[ 1072.903591] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 1953525167 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)

[ 1079.851017] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled

[ 1086.807004] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Asking for cache data failed

[ 1086.807013] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

[ 1086.808772] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Spinning up disk...

When I do lsusb -v the relevant info is:

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bc2:2321 Seagate RSS LLC 

Device Descriptor:

  bLength                18

bDescriptorType         1

bcdUSB               3.00

bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)

bDeviceSubClass         0 

bDeviceProtocol         0 

bMaxPacketSize0         9

idVendor           0x0bc2 Seagate RSS LLC

idProduct          0x2321 

bcdDevice            1.00

iManufacturer           2 Seagate

iProduct                3 Expansion

iSerial                 1 NA4AHSB6

bNumConfigurations      1

Configuration Descriptor:

bLength                 9

bDescriptorType         2

wTotalLength          121

bNumInterfaces          1

bConfigurationValue     1

iConfiguration          0 

bmAttributes         0x80

  (Bus Powered)

MaxPower               36mA

Interface Descriptor:

  bLength                 9

  bDescriptorType         4

  bInterfaceNumber        0

  bAlternateSetting       0

  bNumEndpoints           2

  bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage

  bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI

  bInterfaceProtocol     80 Bulk-Only

  iInterface              0 

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst              15

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst              15

Interface Descriptor:

  bLength                 9

  bDescriptorType         4

  bInterfaceNumber        0

  bAlternateSetting       1

  bNumEndpoints           4

  bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage

  bInterfaceSubClass      6 SCSI

  bInterfaceProtocol     98 

  iInterface              0 

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst              15

    MaxStreams             32

    Data-in pipe (0x03)

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst              15

    MaxStreams             32

    Data-out pipe (0x04)

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x83  EP 3 IN

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst              15

    MaxStreams             32

    Status pipe (0x02)

  Endpoint Descriptor:

    bLength                 7

    bDescriptorType         5

    bEndpointAddress     0x04  EP 4 OUT

    bmAttributes            2

      Transfer Type            Bulk

      Synch Type               None

      Usage Type               Data

    wMaxPacketSize     0x0400  1x 1024 bytes

    bInterval               0

    bMaxBurst               0

    Command pipe (0x01)

But the sdb disk does not appear in fdisk -l and sudo mount /dev/sdb /home/tcj/Desktop/seagate

hangs and gparted "scans" forever but does not find the seagate drive.

Any ideas how I can recover my disk?!

It was formatted ext4.

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  • I'm currently experiencing this issue on one computer with a drive which works fine on another. The working system is running linux 4.1.17 . The failing system is running linux 3.3.8 .
    – fuzzyTew
    Feb 25, 2016 at 23:27

1 Answer 1

-1

I just had a similar issue when trying to dual boot windows 7 with Ubuntu 14.04 and after several problems, I finally figured out that the HDD was dying when in the windows drive selection part of the setup showed one of the disks offline.

I'm no expert but if your drive is old enough, that may be a possibility. I've seen a couple of threads on forced mounting in order to snatch any files that are still on it that you may want/need.

Three other things:

  1. connect something else to that USB port to see if it still functions
  2. Check to see if the USB cable is fully connected
  3. if you have a device that uses the same cable type, connect it and see if it shows up
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  • 1
    @Shane: If I can edit your answer, so can you... :P So, please delete the comment (as it's in your answer now) and next time, just press the edit button below your answer to improve it! ;-)
    – Fabby
    Feb 24, 2015 at 7:20

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