Check integrity of external SSD

[TNorth]

I have been having issues with my installation of Mint 19.1 viewtopic.php?p=1836552#p1836552 that runs from an external SSD - not on my laptop hard drive. It ran fine for several months, but I started having issues such as random (?) black screens, needing to restart, and most recently - not going into suspend either manually or through the power settings.

I have gotten a lot of different advice from rolling back kernels and Timeshifts to running smartmontools to checking RAM. Kernel changes didn't fix the issues. I tried smartmontools but it doesn't appear that my SSD is SMART enabled, so that didn't work. MemtesT showed no RAM issues.

It was also suggested that it was the USB controller in the drive itself, or the USB port in the laptop - which it doesn't appear to be the case, since I get the same behavior when it is plugged into any USB on the laptop.

I am looking for a way to check that SSD to see if there are errors on it before I try much else. (Right now, I have reverted back to Win 7 since the MInt install isn't reliable.)

I am hopeful that there is a way to check the SSD to see if there are any issues with it. It needs to be something that can be done while the SSD is the active drive, since it is not visible when I am in Windows.

I appreciate any suggestions. I would love to get this back working properly!

Thanks so much!

[deck_luck]

...
I have gotten a lot of different advice from rolling back kernels and Timeshifts to running smartmontools to checking RAM. Kernel changes didn't fix the issues. I tried smartmontools but it doesn't appear that my SSD is SMART enabled, so that didn't work. MemtesT showed no RAM issues.
...

You may have to add your device to the smartmontool data base to get it read the s.m.a.r.t. data. I had to add my external USB disks to get it to retrieve the s.m.a.r.t. data. On the other hand, some of the obscure USB/SATA bridge adapters do not support smart. If you are using an older external disk caddy, it might have an obscure bridge adapter. If it is a drive with a builtin USB interface, you can try a web search with the brand and model as well as smart or s.m.a.r.t. search words. Most of the newer external disks support s.m.a.r.t. The https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Supp ... SB-Devices might be useful.

Reference:
https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/USB

[TNorth]

Thanks for the advice. I did check the smartmontool database and my drive is not listed, nor could I see anything about it supporting SMART. It is a Pioneer 3D NAND External SSD(240 GB)-Portable Solid State Drive USB 3.1 Gen 1 (APS-XS03-240) - new in October 2019.

I run Mint from it - so it is mounted when I am in Mint. Can I run a check on it some other way while it is mounted? And it is not recognized by WIndows so I can't do anything with it that way.

Thanks for the help - not sure what my next steps will be. Perhaps contacting Pioneer?

[Moonstone Man]

Thanks for the advice. I did check the smartmontool database and my drive is not listed, nor could I see anything about it supporting SMART.

Try this:

sudo smartctl -a -d sat /dev/sda

where /dev/sda is the Linux drive assignment. That usually works for most USB interfaces.

[TNorth]

OK - so my SSD is /dev/sdb1, so is that what I should substitute for sda?

Thanks!

[Moonstone Man]

OK - so my SSD is /dev/sdb1, so is that what I should substitute for sda?

Thanks!

No, just /dev/sdb. You're querying the device, not its partitions.

[TNorth]

Nope - it says:

sudo: smartctl: command not found[

[Moonstone Man]

Nope - it says:

sudo: smartctl: command not found[

Well, that's because you haven't installed it.

sudo apt install smartmontools ought to do it.

[TNorth]

Thanks!

OK - it all worked and showed no errors - so I guess the problem is not the drive itself.

Guess I have more figuring out to do, but thanks for this help! Much appreciated!