well i tried on my desktop which i know is working ok i also tried it in anther usb port, still the same message.
Ok, so just to be sure I understand;
- You have two external USB hard drives
- Both were in working order
- You plugged one into your computer and copied file(s) off
- You unplugged this drive
- You subsequently plugged it in again and got a “Wrong diagnostic page” error with no further device information
- You then rebooted, plugged it in again and got the same error
- You then tried your other drive and got the same error, again with no device information
- You then did the same on another computer and again got nothing back from dmesg on two devices, other than “Wrong diagnostic page”, with no device information
Is this right?
yes thats right oooooooo
sorrty about the ooooo i need to use 20 characters
Well, it looks like either both drives failed simultaneously, or both computers suffered a USB controller failure at the same time. Whereas you could narrow this down with more testing, neither seems likely.
At this point I would suggest you’ve either made a mistake with what’s listed above, or there is more information that’s not making it’s way to this thread.
The one possibility that’s more common is that something has corrupted both drives, however this does not tie in with the information listed in your “dmesg” output. If the drives were corrupted, I would still expect the system to be able to open the device and log a device name.
If you can’t see what it is that you’ve missed or mis-quoted, then you’re looking for “another” computer to plug those drives into, or “another” external hard drive to plug into those computers … i.e. repeat until you get something that mounts, then work backwards.
ive just tried again 1 hdd is a seagate
1 is a western digital
i tried on another laptop, the seagate didnt work but the wd did… but neither work on my usual laptop
Ok, so does the WD work reliably in that laptop? If it does, try it a few times in the other two machines …
but my usb stick works
my main laptop has mint 22. the other has mint 21
does that make any difference
No. Well. I’m saying that. You’ve described what looks like a hardware error, so in context, no. What sort of filesystem is on the device?
(you can see the filesystem type by inserting the stick, then doing “cat /proc/mounts”, the line for your device will show the filesystem type)
i.e. is it possible the device is not a native Linux filesystem (say NTFS?) and one of your linux systems has the filesystem driver installed and the other does not?
so its screwed then.ooooooooo
Well, it would seem “something” is, but you’ve not really narrowed down “what”.
any more suggestions…
Not really. You need to test what you have. “I plug it in and sometimes it works” isn’t really enough to go on from this end.
Work out what you have to test in terms of drives.
Work out what machines you have to test on.
Work on definitively what does and doesn’t work on which machines.
Look at the logs when you plug a device in and see what errors it gives in detail. The only error you’ve quoted would indicate a hardware issue with your drive and spin-up time, but the logging you’ve quoted seems incomplete, hence the diagnosis is probably also incomplete.
If you have two hard drives which work sometimes and a USB drives that works all the time, it sounds like your hard drives are unreliable. The average live-span of a hard-drive is ~ 3 years. Maybe ~ 10 years for an SSD. How old are your drives?
does the fact i have mint 21 on one machine and 22 on my main machine make any difference.
i dont know how old the hdd are they are used for storgare and then put away. so while they were bought 10yrs + ago, the time they were used is low.
Mmm, amount used not necessarily the problem. Magnetic media and silicon, all degrade over time (not just use). CPU’s etc can often last 20-30 years, but last time I checked the documentation, “official” lifespan for chips in general was of the order of 10 years. (for example) If you have spinning drives > 10 years old and you can get what you want off, I’d do just that and bin them.
Thinking about it, I have a 1TB Western Digital external USB hard disk kicking around here somewhere that some one gave me last year. Bought by accident over the counter, sales droid insisted it was an SSD. I tried to use it a few times but it was so slow, I think I too had issues with spin-up time although I did manage to mount an use it. Didn’t trust it enough to want to put any real data on it tho’ …
might i beable to read them on a microsoft machine.
Well, you didn’t tell me about what sort of file-system is on the device, so I have no way of answering that, other than if it’s a native Linux file-system, probably not. If you just opened the packet and plugged it in, then it’s likely some sort of NTFS or DOS filesystem, which might be one of the reasons you’re having problems in the first place. (as per my comment about re; Mint 21/22)
they were supposed to be all ntfs