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Exeleration-G
Asked: 2017-05-08 04:43:40 +0800 CST

'No medium found' after issuing dd on an old external hard drive

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I'm trying to format an old external hard drive. It doesn't pop up in gparted.

It does get detected though:

dmesg output:

[20022.409487] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 13 using ehci-pci
[20022.538837] usb 2-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0930, idProduct=0b09
[20022.538843] usb 2-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[20022.538847] usb 2-1.2: Product: USB 3.5"-HDD
[20022.538850] usb 2-1.2: Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
[20022.538853] usb 2-1.2: SerialNumber: 001d93cc
[20022.541204] usb-storage 2-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[20022.541889] scsi host6: usb-storage 2-1.2:1.0
[20023.558459] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Sunplus  USB2SATA bridge  0407 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[20023.558974] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[20023.561919] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

lsusb output:

Bus 002 Device 013: ID 0930:0b09 Toshiba Corp. PX1396E-3T01 External hard drive

I read somewhere that I should dd the device with zero's, but that fails as well:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd: failed to open '/dev/sdb': No medium found

Is there anything I can try before throwing it out of the window?

partitioning

3 Answers

  1. In my case I was trying to do:

    • Insert USB stick
    • Unmount automatically mounted partition
    • Try sudo dd if=/mnt/d/instalki/OS/bionicpup32-8.0-uefi.iso of=/dev/sdb

    The error occured only when I unmounted USB stick clicking in file manager GUI. After unmounting by sudo umount /dev/sdb1 dd executed without complaint.

    • 8

  2. Most of the times the "No medium found" error which is same as "No media" label shown on some GUIs means that the hdd is damaged. I tried to "repair" such disks once, I followed every guide I found on the web, I used several OS but nothing could be done...

    So, my advice is "throw it in the recycle bin" (not from the window) and spend your time with something else!

    • 4
  3. Best Answer

    Turned out that I was using a bad power supply. Make sure you use a proper power supply.

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