Unable to access USB drive, an operation already pending

[Ian Bruntlett]

Hi Marco,

On Sun, 3 May 2020 at 11:13, Marco Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

> Thanks Ian! Dmesg is another tool I know, but in the confusion of these
> weeks I had temporarily forgotten.
>
> the relevant output is pasted at the bottom, below your reply. I have done
> a bit of searching, and those messages appeared even with drives that were
> recoverable, even if with reduced capacity, but there seems to be no unique
> way to figure out if this is the case here. What do you recommend? Thanks
> again!
>

OK, I overlooked that you wrote  "The drive does nothing but some random
click sound, once a minute or so.". If it is a hard disc drive, this is a
common indicator that the drive is failing or has failed.

If, by some miracle, you can access data on the drive, copy anything
important to something else for safe keeping.

I believe you can run fsck on it to repair file system errors. Something I
am vaguely aware of but have no experience with. I Googled for "using fsck
to repair disk linux" and came up with some articles that you might find
useful (but I would read the man page for the fsck command before using it.
* https://recoverit.wondershare.com/harddrive-tips/repair-linux-disk.html
* https://www.tecmint.com/fsck-repair-file-system-errors-in-linux/

I use the smartctl facility of most hard drives to check them for problems.
This is no guarantee of good health, I use the GUI interface to smartctl,
GSmartControl, rather than the command line.

There is f3 - a package of command line tools that you can install with
"sudo apt install f3". It has a website -
https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ that explains more. I
use it when I use a USB flash drive for the first time.

Note - I am not an expert on this kind of thing. I just know a bit of info
about useful commands and webpages :)

BW,


Ian

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