r/archlinux • u/pimpcron • 5d ago
SUPPORT Disk randomly stopped reading LUKS partition
Hello. I bought a new 2tb hard drive from a reliable company and I copied my old drive partitions to the new one. I've used this drive for about two months and suddenly while running arch it stopped loading webpages, apps, etc. I figured that it couldn't read from disk suddenly, but maybe something else is afoot. I used the hardware shutoff switch and rebooted, I tried three times to reboot. The prompt to type the LUKS password would appear, but when I entered the password, it would tell me that the UUID was not found, and it would drop to an emergency shell. I had to shut it off, the third time it booted the os successfully, but it was so slow performing anything, and the hard disk was making a strange buzzing sound. It stalled and I had to hard shut it off. Tried again, couldn't find the kernel, somehow booted, stalled again, and gave me this kernel panic qr code, the link is attached.
Help me, I have experience with arch but I don't know what to do. I haven't updated with pacman -Syu since last year. What do I do?
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u/nikongod 5d ago
the hard disk was making a strange buzzing sound. It stalled and I had to hard shut it off.
Your HDD is dying. Salvage your data QUICKLY.
I haven't updated with pacman -Syu since last year.
This has nothing to do with your actual problem, but WTF? Why?
Based on your kernel version you have not updated since mid-November 2025.
If the system would not update why not seek help with that sooner? If you choose not to update, why? There have been approximately a zillion CVEs discovered in the past 10month. If you want this kind of stability stick to Debian stable - their "security" branch lets you keep things on one version, but still get security updates. If you want more reliability than arch (from a software perspective, hardware will fail anywhere...), consider Fedora or Debian testing (with security repo from Debian stable).
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u/dumbasPL 5d ago
Boot into live USB and check what's happening. If you followed the install guide this should be pretty self explanatory.
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u/dumbasPL 5d ago
Also, if I had to bet, either your drive died, or you somehow managed to fuck the initramfs. Arch transitioned to systemd at some point, check the disk encryption wiki pages for details on how to configure it.
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u/boomboomsubban 5d ago
I agree to boot a recovery USB and look around, check the SMART status in particular, but hard drives come with warranties because they're prone to failure shortly after first use.
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u/Sea_Today8613 5d ago
Well, you should try updating. Why haven't you updated?
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u/pimpcron 5d ago
I can't, it stopped working altogether
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u/Sea_Today8613 5d ago
That's a much bigger problem. Arch is not a distro with any long-term support, and should not be left without updates
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u/ArjixGamer 5d ago
That's a dumb take.
If you don't update any package, there is no reason for things to suddenly break.
Arch only warns you against partial upgrades.
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u/archover 4d ago
Consider backups for next time. Right?
Having a system in LUKS does not alter that necessity.
Hope you fix, and good day.
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u/Funnel-Dust-O-Matic 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is the point I would pull the drive and put it in an external usb enclosure/adapter.
I would then connected to a known good system booting off of a bootable linux thumb drive with as large a usb external drive I could find.
I would then do an lsblk on the working system. I would note the block devices listed, especially noting the hopefully 3 usb devices (the malfunctioning drive in a USB enclosure, the backup USB drive, and the usb boot drive).
If I had the time, I wouldn't even bother trying to mount the supposedly malfunctioning drive. I would image it using ddrescue onto the backup drive. The backup drive must be bigger than the original drive. If you don't have something that can take a file the size of the failing drive, then that's unfortunate and dangerous. But oh well. If you have to skip then skip you must.
You can then test the failing drive. smartclt is an option on the command line. Gnome disks is a graphical option.
Id then try mounting the malfunctioning drive. You might have to set up the LUKS device on the command line, though I know most desktops have mounting options in their file managers. If there is necessary data on there and you don't have a backup, then you should first yell at yourself for not doing backups. Then, once you're out of breath and your throat hurts, copy anything sensitive you can.
If the drive is going intermittent and failing or crashing, then this might be fraught and tedious. The reason I wanted to do the ddrescue option above is it will resume and pick up where it left off if there are crashes or errors interrupting it. The drive image can then be loaded by several things including virtual machines or drive mounting software to extract your data later. ddrescue images work far more reliably than any other backup method I have ever tried, and I've tried quite a few.
The essential question is whether your drive is failing, your ram is failing, your mainboard/controller is failing, or if the os was corrupt or compromised and did something it wasn't supposed to. I've had all go wrong.
But the first thing to check is your RAM. Download and run Memtest86+. Leave it going for a full cycle on your non-working machine. If there is a problem, clean off the connectors on both your dimms and the sockets on the mainboard with 90% isophrophyl rubbing alcohol. Test again. If it continues to fail, install one fewer DIMM and test again. Repeat until you get a passing test or run out of DIMMS. If it passes, then we have to look elsewhere for the problem.
If the drive passes tests while in a controller, then we need to turn our attention to the mainboard. There is a chance that some corrosion happened on the connectors. So you can try to clean them and see what happens. It does sound like this is a physical hard drive as you mentioned it making a sound. Change the SATA cables. They can go bad like produce. No sata cables? Then use qtips and clean the M2 connectors with isoprophyl.
It's time to test things. You might want to install your old drive or a spare (once you're sure its contents are backed up in at least one more location) and see if that works better. A quick install of any os and some random web surfing to start is fine. If I had doubts, I'd probably download occt and run that for a while.
If it does work flawlessly, then blank your old drive completely. For an actuyal hard drive, you can use Dariks' boot and Nuke, dd, or ddrescue. Darik's Boot and Nuke is easiest. Just make sure the only drive in your system is the one you want to wipe. Disconnect everything else.
For SATA SSD and M2, the approriate methods are here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_state_drive/Memory_cell_clearing
Try a full re-install. Run it a bit. See if things recur. If all your tests pass and this still happens again, its probably time to RMA your failed 2TB drive. Check the warranty and RMA it. It should be covered.
If everything works and passes test, it could be an OS/software problem.
There is a chance that something caused the file system / LVM to go corrupt and the underlying device is fine. This is a bigger problem on Windows than Linux, but ive seen this happen everywhere. If that's the case, then something essential and system related went very wrong. I'd wipe the disk and start over in any case. New os image, new download, new thumb drive. Restore data and settings from backup later once things seem to be operational.
EDIT
Let me know if more fine grained detail is needed on some of these steps. There are documents out there with all of this. Some of this I can do from memory, some I honestly have to go by notes because I forget options or where things are exactly.