Without Warning.

[The Duck]

Hello forum,

Was using Linux Mint 21.0 and really starting to like it when without warning poof gone like dust in the wind.

Thank goodness I save everything important onto other media storage cs/dvd, usb flash drives, and a Dell backup drive.

Have no Idea what happened was rebooting my desktop and nothing but a blinking horizontal dash.

I immediately grabbed my Easy OS USB flash drive and booted it and all is well.

I shut down and rebooted to the internal mechanical hard drive and again only a horizontal blinking dash.

What a bummer.

Okay so I installed the latest release of MX Linux and all is well no hard drive errors or nothing so have no idea of what happened.

I'm did over the last few days I wiped clean 50 USB flash drives although find it hard to believe that would have caused this problem.

Anyhow guess these things just happen when they do for whatever unknown reason and this isn't a first as I've had the same experience on other desktops throughout the years.

So to everyone make sure to backup anything you consider to be of importance to you as when you least expect it POOF everything is gone.

 

[Condobloke]

Wow !....now THAT is gonna open your eyes !

Any chance a bad connection, somewhere ?....or maybe memory stick going on the blink ?.....

I just glared at my pc and whispered..."dont you dare do that to me" !!

 

[APTI]

only things I am aware of that will do what you describe....

1... loss of power during some critical disk operation.
2... Hard drive corruption due to problem #1 or because a butterfly in China flapped its wings.
3... Mechanical hard drive dying. Look at S.M.A.R.T. and see if any errors are showing. That includes corrected errors, seek errors and so on. If any are into double digit then you need a new drive as it is dying.

Hope one of those helps. I am personally voting for #3 as the culprit

 

[Condobloke]

because a butterfly in China flapped its wings.

That's gonna be it !

On a more serious note ....the hdd doing its end of life thing is more likely.......I experienced that very thing with a ssd and two hdd's in the past couple of weeks.

 

[The Duck]

Any chance a bad connection, somewhere ?....or maybe memory stick going on the blink ?.....

Nope I opened the case and pulled the connectors and re-seated them and pulled the memory sticks and re-seated them.

 

[The Duck]

only things I am aware of that will do what you describe....

1... loss of power during some critical disk operation.
2... Hard drive corruption due to problem #1 or because a butterfly in China flapped its wings.
3... Mechanical hard drive dying. Look at S.M.A.R.T. and see if any errors are showing. That includes corrected errors, seek errors and so on. If any are into double digit then you need a new drive as it is dying.

Hope one of those helps. I am personally voting for #3 as the culprit

Nope on #1 have a good battery backup.
I doubt that on #2 although perhaps possible.
No errors on S.M.A.R.T. showing hard is old although it's working fine.

Hard to say what the cause is or was just hope it doesn't happen again.

 

[The Duck]

On a more serious note ....the hdd doing its end of life thing is more likely.......I experienced that very thing with a ssd and two hdd's in the past couple of weeks.

Most likely the start of a failing hard drive as the hard drive is 2 years and a few months old and was pulled from another desktop I had.

Oh well the price I pay for being on the cheap for my computers but that's okay as I've always been a cheap old fart even though I can afford a BA Computer I like to salvage.

Why not use what you already have or can get on the cheap.


Thanks for the replies.

 

[Condobloke]

Give yourself a treat, try one of these

Amazon.com

 

[The Duck]

The Wife bought a couple of these

L5 3D SSD 240GB | TEAMGROUP

L5 3D SSD read/write speed is 4 times faster than traditional hard drive , smooth read/write speed – up to 500 MB/s of read speed is able to enhance the speed and performance of the overall system, ultra lightweight and slim - 2.5-inch hard drive with just 7.0 mm thickness, it can be installed...

www.teamgroupinc.com

a year or so ago and forgot about them and ran across them a few days ago.

Go figure right.

Wives ya gotta love them.

 

[Condobloke]

Wives ya gotta love them.

Agreed !

 

[etcetera]

I got dual SSDs, 2280 in size, PCIe/NVMe.
I clone the operating system about once a month. If something is very critical, I throw it onto some other medium.

With spinning rust HDDs, mechanical failure is your problem.

With latest-greatest SSDs, user error is usually the problem, in my experience, anyway.

To make clones, in Linux, Clonezilla is most excellent. If you run Windowz, Macrium Reflect is most excellent.

I have not had luck with good olde "dd", it apparently doesn't copy the partition table stuff.

 

[bob466]

Sounds like Hardware to me...HDD/SSD...Power Supply...Motherboard...loose cable etc.

I'd check the HDD/SSD first...then Power Supply (I have a spare)...loose cables and dust. As for the Motherboard...mine failed last year was 10 years old...all of the above get the same result.

I always use one of these...