Help to understand an error message on hdd

[Josh Schneider]

nvme enclosures for usb are rare ducks - not widely used/needed so finding one that works is tough... I'm not a ugreen fan (chinese crap) but I found this one with an asmedia chipset in my junk box to occasionally 'clean' any nvme that's lost it's damn mind...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NPFV21K/?tag=snbforums-20

for isolating power problems, I did wire a breakout for the usb-C connector that separates the power from the data lines to eliminate flaky power issues from an upstream usb device - but even without that, it may work in a pinch to do a diskpart 'clean'...

Thanks for the continued input. My drive is already "seen" in diskmgmt, but cannot be initialized. Message refers to hardware failure. Question is whether that's the drive or the enclosure.

 

[thecheapseats]

forget the gui - useless in this case... have you ever used diskpart from the command line in win?... if not - do that...

 

[ColinTaylor]

Question is whether that's the drive or the enclosure.

The drive's SMART info should tell you that as that information is independent of any external device it may be connected to.

 

[thecheapseats]

The drive's SMART info should tell you that as that information is independent of any external device it may be connected to.

several usb chipset implementations don't pass the smart info upstream... they could/should, but unfortunately, some don't...

 

[ColinTaylor]

several usb chipset implementations don't pass the smart info upstream... they could/should, but unfortunately, some don't...

Even so, if it says there's a fault with the drive then there's a fault with the drive (even if the opposite may not necessarily true).

 

[thecheapseats]

yep... however, blowing the drive away with a diskpart 'clean' (if it's 'seen' in diskpart) is bruteforce quick and dirty, and gets him to an initialize/format stage - which at minimum confirms the nvme's controller is sane... testing the memory is all that's left...

 

[Josh Schneider]

forget the gui - useless in this case... have you ever used diskpart from the command line in win?... if not - do that...

I have used diskpart, but didn't try it in this case. By tonight, I'll have an alternative enclosure to try out, so that will be my first step. I've been away from home, so no way to continue testing yet.

In fact, I did get S.M.A.R.T. failure reports using smartctl in Linux (said that several posts ago, and also bad superblock errors), so my initial thought was that the disk had gone bad. I just started to wonder whether the enclosure could have been the source of these kinds of errors, incorrectly reporting disk failure, and once I swapped in another known good disk, it seemed like maybe the answer could be yes. That said, the drive I swapped in was almost certainly encrypted (from a laptop managed by my wife's employer), so that may have been a bad test.

I'll just report back once I have a better sense of what's going on. I appreciate all of the tips and advice.

 

[Josh Schneider]

Following up on this. I managed to get what was salvageable off the drive, and also now have it installed directly in a laptop and am running a WinPE set of tools from a USB stick.

The drive seems to be in a completely unusable state. I've tried all commands from diskpart, including clear. Anything I try results in a CRC error, readonly error (somehow, even though trying to change attributes didn't work, it currently shows it's not readonly, but did before), and due to having tried some repair tools, chkdsk now reports the partitions are RAW. Running any tool that checks the drive for errors reports many, but cannot fix them all. I'm just asking Multipointe, the company that supports (makes?) HP SSDs, whether they'll agree to destroy the drive, since I can't actually wipe it.

Thanks again for all the advice.

 

[Josh Schneider]

Well, after that update I did finally manage to use an NVME tool to completely wipe the disk. It now cannot be initialized or partitioned (again, CRC errors). I guess that's as good as I can get to send it in for replacement.

 

[thecheapseats]

well heck - you tried... the nvme controller seems partially alive- weird, as that's the device that usually fails completely... I've had false positives from smart data only twice but both occurred on nvme drives - one took a re-flash of firmware, the other, a clean fixed it... but hey - broken is broken... never hurts to give it a shot...

 

[Josh Schneider]

I actually had gotten a hold of the mass production tool for the controller, but frankly, didn't want to figure out how to use it and risk really destroying the drive. Oddly, after I managed to finally wipe the partitions and MBR, all of the previously reported block-level errors disappeared when scanned with tools (e.g., Disk Genius). I have no idea what that meant, or how much of any information I was getting from various tools was correct. The consistent thing seemed to be CRC errors when trying to make changes to the drive.

I'm hoping I won't have issues with the replacement, and will be back to considering whether I want to change anything with my setup. The Plugable USB enclosure with RTL9210 bridge did help me in this process, so I'll probably hang onto that.