USB disk does not get detected

Ask Fedora
,
1

Hello,

I have received an HP 2TB USB stick which does not work on a Windows computer, it is not being detected anymore.
When I connected it to my Fedora 43 KDE system I have seen the contents of the stick 1 single time, the owner also looked at the data on the stick and assured me this may all be wiped. In other words do what you need/want to do.

I know now I should never have removed the stick after seeing the contents on the fully mounted device, because after that 1 time it is impossible to get it detected again.
All I see when I type lsblk is:

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    1     0B  0 disk

The used file system is exfat which, because of the 1 time success, is readable on Linux.

I have used these programs trying to connect to the stick but none of them worked:

sudo dmesg -w | less, which spits out a huge amount of info

smartctl -d auto /dev/sda
smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.18.4-200.fc43.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

/dev/sda: Unknown USB bridge [0x1e3d:0x198a (0x100)]
Please specify device type with the -d option.

Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary

smartctl -h auto /dev/sda
smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.18.4-200.fc43.x86_64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

/dev/sda: Unknown USB bridge [0x1e3d:0x198a (0x100)]
Please specify device type with the -d option.

Use smartctl -h to get a usage summary

The next one gave no output at all:

parted -l /dev/sda

Hoping it would read the exfat file system I tried:

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda
[sudo] password for jan: 
Mounting volume... Error opening '/dev/sda': No medium found
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors... Error opening '/dev/sda': No medium found
FAILED
Failed to startup volume: No medium found
Error opening '/dev/sda': No medium found
Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.

sudo dnf install chkdsk
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Failed to resolve the transaction:
No match for argument: chkdsk
You can try to add to command line:
  --skip-unavailable to skip unavailable packages

sudo gdisk /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.10

Problem opening /dev/sda for reading! Error is 123.

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.41.3).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

fdisk: cannot open /dev/sda: No medium found

Tried to get mkusb but failed. It can apparently wipe the first 1MB of the stick in case there is something wrong on it

sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda1
tune2fs 1.47.3 (8-Jul-2025)
tune2fs: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sda1
Couldn't find valid filesystem superblock.

sudo lshw -class disk
  *-namespace:0             
       description: NVMe disk
       physical id: 0
       logical name: hwmon3
  *-namespace:1
       description: NVMe disk
       physical id: 2
       logical name: /dev/ng0n1
  *-namespace:2
       description: NVMe disk
       physical id: 1
       bus info: nvme@0:1
       logical name: /dev/nvme0n1
       size: 953GiB (1024GB)
       capabilities: gpt-1.00 partitioned partitioned:gpt
       configuration: guid=bb37fe20-733d-41e5-bde7-f29a4f005757 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512 wwid=eui.002538b721b068b8
  *-disk
       description: SCSI Disk
       product: Flash Disk
       vendor: ChipsBnk
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sda
       version: 5.00
       capabilities: removable
       configuration: ansiversion=2 logicalsectorsize=512 sectorsize=512
     *-medium
          physical id: 0
          logical name: /dev/sda

sudo sfdisk -l
This results in only info about my hard disk, the USB is not found at all

Is there any other way I can breath air into this otherwise dead USB device?

Thank you.

2

From what you write it sounds like the usb disk is failing.
So I doubt you can get it working. And even if you did you should expect to lose any data written to it.

3

Well Barry, to be honest I am thinking the same thing. I was just hoping somebody here with expertise on USB devices might know something. I do realize that the chance we will get this thing up and running again is slim to nothing. It’s just that it is not a few GB device but a 2TB one.
Thank you for your answer.

4

Try running sudo dmesg -W, then plugging the device in. That will limit the amount of output (-W is like -w, but just prints new messages without the backlog) and show how your system is recognising the drive.

Based on the other commands you’ve shown it sounds like the drive itself has decided that it has no storage attached, so unless that was immediately after you’d ejected it in software I’d expect this to be failed hardware.

5

Thank you Thomas, I will try it although I also think the device is history.

6

Sound like the partition table (at the least) is messed up. Maybe the drive has failed at a deeper level too.
Look up error ‘123’ (error from Gdisk?) to find out what that means.

On Windoze there are some ‘undelete’ software that do a good job of reading whole drives bit by bit and recovering ‘lost’ files.
There are probably some on Linux too. Look them up and try them out.