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From: Robert Nichols <rnicholsNOSPAM@comcast.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2015 13:53:59 -0600
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Subject: Re: [dm-crypt] Fwd: Cannot wipe header on device
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To: dm-crypt@saout.de

On 12/14/2015 02:44 AM, Luís de Sousa wrote:
> I understand this is not an issue with cryptsetup, but would anyone
> have suggestions on how to proceed? Is there any hope of "fixing"
> this, e.g. marking this sector as unusable?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Luís
>
> $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096 count=1 oflag=sync,direct
> dd: error writing ‘/dev/sdb1’: Remote I/O error
> 1+0 records in
> 0+0 records out
> 0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.00142455 s, 0.0 kB/s

There should also have been some system error messages logged which
might be informative.

When any reasonably modern (last 20 years, or so) drive shows an
I/O error on a write operation, it generally means that the drive
has run out of spare sectors or has some problem other than media
errors.  Such a drive is long past the time it should have been
replaced.

It would be interesting to see the output from
"smartctl -A /dev/sdb", if the interface supports it. (Not all
USB <=> SATA bridge chips support the necessary commands.)

-- 
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.