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I want to list and remove the content of a directory on a removable hard drive. But I have experienced "Input/output error":

$ rm  pic -R
rm: cannot remove `pic/60.jpg': Input/output error
rm: cannot remove `pic/006.jpg': Input/output error
rm: cannot remove `pic/008.jpg': Input/output error
rm: cannot remove `pic/011.jpg': Input/output error

$ ls -la pic
ls: cannot access pic/60.jpg: Input/output error
-????????? ? ?    ?         ?            ? 006.jpg
-????????? ? ?    ?         ?            ? 006.jpg
-????????? ? ?    ?         ?            ? 011.jpg

I was wondering what the problem is?

How can I recover or remove the directory pic and all of its content?

My OS is Ubuntu 12.04, and the removable hard drive has ntfs filesystem. Other directories not containing or inside pic on the removable hard drive are working fine.

Added:

Last part of output of dmesg after I tried to list the content of the directory:

[19000.712070] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci_hcd
[19000.853167] usb-storage 1-1:1.0: Quirks match for vid 05e3 pid 0702: 520
[19000.853195] scsi5 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[19001.856687] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ST316002 1A               0811 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[19001.858821] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[19001.861733] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte logical blocks: (160 GB/149 GiB)
[19001.862969] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[19001.865223] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Cache data unavailable
[19001.865232] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19001.867597] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[19001.869214] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Cache data unavailable
[19001.869218] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19001.891946]  sdb: sdb1
[19001.894713] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[19001.895950] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Cache data unavailable
[19001.895953] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19001.895958] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[19113.024123] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd
[19113.218157] scsi6 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0
[19114.232249] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  Storage Device   0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[19114.233992] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[19114.242547] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] 312581808 512-byte logical blocks: (160 GB/149 GiB)
[19114.243144] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[19114.243154] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 08 00 00 00
[19114.243770] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present
[19114.243778] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19114.252797] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present
[19114.252807] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19114.280407]  sdc: sdc1 < sdc5 >
[19114.289774] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page present
[19114.289779] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[19114.289783] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
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3
  • 1
    An I/O error can be a hardware issue (damaged RAM or hard disk). It can also mean a damaged filesystem or a driver bug; since this is NTFS I wouldn't rule this out.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Jun 2, 2012 at 23:45
  • 2
    I don't have reputation to answer this, but almost all times when I met this error, I was running out of storage and even when I emptied storage, I needed to restart the PC (or VM if you're using one, docker counts)
    – Ahmed I. Elsayed
    Commented May 6, 2021 at 22:22
  • 1
    for non pro solution, just reboot the system was useful for me
    – Zaman Oof
    Commented Apr 15, 2022 at 21:30

8 Answers 8

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55

Input/Output errors during filesystem access attempts generally mean hardware issues.

Type dmesg and check the last few lines of output. If the disc or the connection to it is failing, it'll be noted there.

EDIT Are you mounting it via ntfs or ntfs-3g ? As I recall, the legacy ntfs driver had no stable write support and was largely abandoned when it turned out ntfs-3g was significantly more stable and secure.

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4
  • 3
    I connect the removable hard drive to my Ubuntu 12.04, and it is automatically mounted. So I guess ntfs-3g?
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 2, 2012 at 23:31
  • 12
    Don't "guess". Check -- you can see how everything is mounted by typing the mount command and looking at the output.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Jun 2, 2012 at 23:33
  • 2
    (1) I have added the last part of output of dmesg after I tried to list the content of the directory. I don't know how it helps. (2) I can't see if it is mounted by nfts-3g or ntfs, by looking at the output of mount: /dev/sdb1 on /media/removable_drive type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096)
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 2, 2012 at 23:40
  • 7
    fuseblk means it's using the fuser filesystem-in-userspace method which is what ntfs-3g uses. So you're good in that regard.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 0:31
25

As Sadhur states this is probably caused by disk hardware issues and the dmesg output is the right place to check this.

You can issue a surface scan of your disk from Linux /sbin/badblocks /dev/sda.

Check the manual page for more thorough tests an basic fixes (block relocation). This is all filesystem-agnostic, so it is safe even with an NTFS filesystem as it operates on the 'disk surface' level.

I personally made this to run on a monthly basis from cron. Of course you need to check if you receive the cron mails in your mailbox (which is often not the case by default). These mails end up in /var/mail/$USER or similar.

I created /etc/cron.d/badblocks:

30 4 * * 3 root [ -x /sbin/badblocks ] && [ $(date +\%d) -le 7 ] && /sbin/badblocks /dev/sda
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5
  • Thanks! To run the command you suggested, is it /sbin/badblocks /media/removable_drive in my case?
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 13:11
  • No. According to the dmesg output you have to use sdb: /sbin/badblocks /dev/sdb or sdc. I can't really figure out what happend / you did from dmesg
    – jippie
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 13:20
  • You can find your /dev/sd{x} disk with fdisk -l command
    – lucidyan
    Commented Dec 8, 2018 at 7:29
  • remember badblocks app accepts begin and end blocks to work with in case you want to "suspend/resume" :)
    – Aquarius Power
    Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 20:17
  • 3
    according to man badblocks "it is strongly recommended that users not run backblocks directly, but rather use the -c option of the e2fsck and mke2fs programs."
    – geneorama
    Commented May 14, 2020 at 18:54
13

Your filesystem is damaged , for NTFS volumes you should run a chkdsk under windows system , but it's nearly impossible to recover. Sometimes you might need to format the disk.

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3
  • Thanks! My other directories are fine. Can I not format the whole drive, just reclaim the space from the directory in question?
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 1:12
  • 1
    @Tim , you had to copy all of the rest out , format and copy them back ... i don't know if one can remove a single node ... not familiar with NTFS structure
    – daisy
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 1:14
  • 5
    Before formatting, try the badblocks commmand on Linux.
    – jippie
    Commented Jun 3, 2012 at 7:47
8

A solution that works for me is to downgrade the ntfs-3g version from the 2014 release to the 2012 release. This should solve your ntfs partition access problem. In the long run this is not a solution because eventually you will need to run the latest release.

More info here

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2
  • 3
    Thank you so much. That solved my problem. I installed the latest stable release (2016.2.22) from source and now it is working flawlessly. Installation instructions I used: tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g
    – Ricardo Pereira
    Commented May 24, 2016 at 8:11
  • Okay, that is good to know. So basically there is a window between 2012 and beginning 2016 during which the drive simply didn't work.
    – user50037
    Commented May 25, 2016 at 11:29
3

Nobody mentioned what to do if Linux tools are not working and only a Mac, but not Windows, is available.

Can be fixed on OS X with Paragon NTFS

In my case gparted said to go find a Windows PC which was nowhere to be found. But a Mac was around, for which this great piece of software is available. Installed the trial version, performed verify, then repair - and voilà!

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1
  • I had a case on macos when such error was produced by usage of sshfs (seemingly) in build toolchain. Installing osxfuse & sshfs via brew helped.
    – sdd
    Commented Sep 2, 2019 at 16:35
3

I just wanted to share my experience: on FreeBSD 10.3, I mounted my external hard drive with 

$ sudo ntfs-3g /dev/da0s1 /media

Inside the hard drive, I did a mkdir to create a directory and then moved some files to it, of course with mv command. Finally I did the following command:

$ sudo sync

Then I mounted the hard drive on a Linux machine with kernel 4.4.0-78-generic. Now When I list the contents of the hard drive, the directory created on FreeBSD, named Jeff, is shown like below:

$ ls -lhrtci
ls: cannot access 'Jeff': Input/output error
total 20K
  ? d????????? ? ?    ?       ?            ? Jeff

enter image description here

Also, when trying to remove the Jeff directory, I receive the following error message:

$ sudo rm -f -R Jeff
rm: cannot remove 'Jeff': Input/output error

enter image description here

I couldn't get rid of Jeff directory on Linux machine, therefore I used the FreeBSD machine and re-mounted the hard drive on FreeBSD again. But the ls, cd and rm commands on FreeBSD generate the same Input/output error. Looks like there has been a bug on FreeBSD ntfs-3g package.

UPDATE

I moved all my data from external hard drive to a Linux machine, of course the corrupt file Jeff couldn't be moved due to I/O error. Then I reformatted the external hard drive with both zeroing of the volume and bad sector checking like this:

$ sudo mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdb1

And then moved all the data back to the external volume. This way, I lost the corrupt file named Jeff, however, my external hard drive is clean of any I/O error.

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2

I just wanted to add my solution to this thread for the benefit of others - I did some work on my system when my power supply failed - I must have reconnected the SATA cables in the wrong order as when I switched them over, everything worked again - no idea why the boot disk needed to be on a specific SATA port, anyway, might be the answer for someone else.

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2

For me the problem was simple, the directory I was in was mounted (USB stick) to my monitor before hibernation, which came back unmounted after hibernation. After hibernation, I could see ls in the terminal, but nothing was actually there because the USB wasn't mounted. I just had to re-mount the USB.

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1
  • This solved it for me; thanks for posting a "trivial" answer.
    – Tyler R.
    Commented Sep 24, 2021 at 20:27

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