Buffer I/O error on device - SSD in SATA3 external case connected over USB3

Question

I am experiencing a weird issue with my HDD. I have an ultrabook to which, I am connecting an external HDD case, based on ASMedia's AS2115 chip. Gentoo is installed on that HDD, this is how I boot... It is faaar from optimal... but this is how it must be - linux on the external drive :(

It happened to me twice, both after random amount of time, under some load to the drive, caused by ongoing update that the drive stopped working. On the second occasion I was ready with log dump to a file on a USB stick, this is what I got from /var/log/messages, just before the disk shut off:

Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: usb 3-2: USB disconnect, device number 2
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Write(10) 2a 00 01 c4 07 ef 00 00 08 00
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 29624303
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: EXT4-fs warning (device sdb1): ext4_end_bio:332: I/O error -5 writing to inode 957101 (offset 0 size 4096 starting block 3703038)
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 3703030
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Write(10) 2a 00 01 c4 09 57 00 00 08 00
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 29624663
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: EXT4-fs warning (device sdb1): ext4_end_bio:332: I/O error -5 writing to inode 957029 (offset 0 size 4096 starting block 3703083)
Dec  9 00:57:13 latitude kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 3703075

After that the OS was unresponsive, I had the shell on my screen, with blinking prompt, but could not run any command.

I gathered some more diagnostics:

e2fsck & fsck.ext4
s7.postimg.org/3ken1aj6j/20151209_223119.jpg

lsusb -D external_usb_case
pastebin.com/j71A4uJK

dmesg
pastebin.com/tSpGeQ0R

lsmod
pastebin.com/rpbWA2jK

smartctl
pastebin.com/ccM1nUbL

Sorry for the link format, apparently I need 10 reputation points in order to publish more than 2 links 0_o

It looks like drive is ok, what might be the issue ? how to fix it ?

Answer 1

Summarizing a weekend of research, installation, tweaking and configuration:

• I Followed Jeff's suggestion and turned to manufacturers software. There I found new firmware for my drive, which successfully flashed.
• Reinstalled system with LVM support, I'm still looking at

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/AutoFS

but honestly I have not had any incidents since reinstall. Right now I'm configuring remaining packets and bringing my pc to former glory :)

--edit

Well, there was an incident system is now on LVM so it recovered ^_^