I am not proficient in IT or Linux, but I have friends who have been using Linux for at least 18 years without any problems. This issue is a significant concern for me as I have downloaded many files for my hobbies. Being 75 years old, this is my way to stay alert.

Please help me locate my device on my PC and guide me on how to use it again. If possible, could you provide different commands to retrieve my 8TB drive? I am also trying to understand some terminology such as swap, GPT, etc.

Thank you for your assistance, and I appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Thanks for the information :)

i.e.

$ sudo e2fsck -c /dev/sda3

or even -cc:

$ sudo e2fsck -cc /dev/sda3

They will do it in one go.

$ man e2fsck:

The -c option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8) program to do a read-only scan of the device in order to find any bad blocks. If any bad blocks are found, they are added to the bad block inode to prevent them from being allocated to a file or directory.

If this option is specified twice, then the bad block scan will be done using a non-destructive read-write test.

Kamal, /dev/sda10 was an example partition device. You can see your partition names with “df” or “lsblk“.

Whatever you do, do NOT umount the partition that is mounted as "/".

Good Luck,
Adam

$ sudo e2fsck -l badsectors.txt /dev/sda10

After all, you do provide sample output for other commands that you run.