Re: [dm-crypt] Fwd: Cannot wipe header on device

[Arno Wagner <arno@wagner.name>]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 20:53:59 CET, Robert Nichols wrote:
> 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.

I second that. Errors on reads may be fixable (though it is not
a very good idea to try), errors on write signal imminent death.
 
> 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.)

Especially not very old ones.

Regards,
Arno
-- 
Arno Wagner,     Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform.,    Email: arno@wagner.name
GnuPG: ID: CB5D9718  FP: 12D6 C03B 1B30 33BB 13CF  B774 E35C 5FA1 CB5D 9718
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