[CentOS] External harddisk

Wed Sep 30 15:49:14 UTC 2020
H <agents at meddatainc.com>

On 09/30/2020 03:21 AM, Simon Matter wrote:
>> I have an old external harddisk, Toshiba 320 Gb, with a USB connector that
>> I wanted to check for contents. It did not start up when connected and I
>> could not hear the motor spinning. After leaving it in the freezer
>> overnight the motor spins but it is not recognized by my computer. I
>> disassembled it and could see that the head assembly rests outside the
>> disk but when it is powered on, the head first moves to the center of the
>> disk, then to the periphery and finally back to the resting position. This
>> happens every few seconds and leaving it connected overnight changed
>> nothing.
>>
>> I installed smartmontools but the disk is not even recognized by my system
>> as a /dev/sd* device and therefore not accessible to smartd (at least as
>> far as I know it.)
> Usually such devices had an ide or sata port and the USB connection was
> made with an interface module. Maybe you can connect the device directly
> with an ide or sata adapter and see if it shows up there.
>
> It's also quite normal that a drive doesn't spin up after being powered of
> for a long time. Moving the drive around in your hand so that the disks
> can turn inside can help to make them going.
>
> Regards,
> Simon
>
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It has a SATA-interface and I could try that but not in the next few days unfortunately. As I said, putting it in the freezer dislodged the disks and I had tried moving/shaking it prior to that but this did not help.