Hard Disk Missing

[pigzag]

I have had Debian Buster installed for a while. After a

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sudo apt dist-upgrade

I had some problems, and I figured it was just due to shared libraries having been upgraded. I thought all would be fine after restarting. I happened to turn off, rather than restart. But since then I've not been able to boot.

The strange thing is that I entered the bios settings and the whole hard disk seems to be missing! Clearly I hadn't physically removed the disk at this point.

So I took the disk out and booted from a USB drive. I connected the disk and attched it via a USB adapter and it still wouldn't show up as a mountable drive. This is the dmesg output when I plug it in via USB:

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[129720.315725] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 14 using xhci_hcd
[129720.466038] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bc2, idProduct=a013, bcdDevice= 1.00
[129720.466045] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[129720.466049] usb 1-2: Product: USB
[129720.466053] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Seagate
[129720.466057] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 2HC015KJ
[129720.647120] usb-storage 1-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[129720.647341] scsi host2: usb-storage 1-2:1.0
[129720.648384] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[129720.683732] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas
[129721.672753] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Seagate  USB              0409 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[129721.673532] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[129721.676652] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
[129721.676657] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 0-byte physical blocks
[129721.677200] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[129721.677761] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Asking for cache data failed
[129721.677765] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[129721.681972] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

But I can't access the disk in anyway:

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cfdisk: cannot open /dev/sdb: No such file or directory

I can't figure this out at all. If the disk was now defective, how come it shows up in dmesg? If it shows up in dmesg and mentions sdb, why can't fdisk see it?

[Segfault]

In short: if it won't show up in the BIOS setup then it is dead. Nowadays disks have built-in controllers, this controller may respond in some way causing this sdb appear in dmesg. It is still dead.

[p.H]

This is the dmesg output when I plug it in via USB

This is only the USB adapter part. Information specific to the hard disk itself is missing. Note the size=0. It is like an empty card reader or optical disk drive without any media.
You would get the same messages with the USB adapter alone and no disk attached to it.

[pigzag]

Oh, OK. That's depressing! Thanks very much to both of you for you help.

[pigzag]

This definitely couldn't have anything to do with UEFI/Legacy Bios having been on one setting and now being on the other, I don't see how I could have done this. The drive does make a clicking initialising sound when first plugged in.

[4D696B65]

This definitely couldn't have anything to do with UEFI/Legacy Bios having been on one setting and now being on the other, I don't see how I could have done this. The drive does make a clicking initialising sound when first plugged in.

Clicking often means the read/write head is resetting constantly. Time for a new hard drive.