HDSentinel stays on "Examining hard disk configuration"

[technicianusr]

Hi,

After starting HDSentinel (with sudo ./HDSentinel) with no parameters HDSentinel stays on the Examining step for more than an hour... This is what the command line is displaying;

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Examining hard disk configuration ...

Device 0 : /dev/sda

I had to close the command line to quit the application. The sda drive is a NVMe SSD.

Any suggestions on what might be going on?

Thanks.

[hdsentinel]

Interesting as NVMe SSDs are usually mapped differently (eg. /dev/nvme0 ) and they are supported, should be detected of course.
Maybe /dev/sda is a special drive which causes that the detection stops (no response from the drive or its controller at all).

I suggest to start

./hdsentinel -enabletest

which should create a testmode.txt file with the steps performed and the response from the disk drives during detection.
Please send this testmode.txt file in e-mail to info (at) hdsentinel (dot) com as then it is possible to check what happens.

If you have other drives, you may try to specifically check them with -dev switch, eg.

./hdsentinel -dev /dev/sdb

or even try

./hdsentinel -dev /dev/nvme0

to check specifically that drive.

[technicianusr]

This is the result of the ./hdsentinel -enabletest command:

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Hard Disk Sentinel for LINUX console 0.19c.9986 (c) 2021 info@hdsentinel.com
Start with -r [reportfile] to save data to report, -h for help

Examining hard disk configuration ...

HDD Device  0: /dev/sda             
HDD Model ID : APPLE SSD SM0256G
HDD Serial No: S29CNYAGC56557
HDD Revision : BXW1SA0Q
HDD Size     : 239372 MB
Interface    : S-ATA Gen3, 6 Gbps
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

HDD Device  1: /dev/sdb
HDD Model ID : SanDisk Cruzer Glide 3.0
HDD Serial No: 4C530000020418116072
HDD Revision : 1.00
HDD Size     : 29759 MB
Interface    : SCSI
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

HDD Device  2: /dev/sdc
HDD Model ID : APPLE   SD Card Reader
HDD Serial No: ?
HDD Revision : 3.00
HDD Size     : 0 MB
Interface    : SCSI
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

You'll find the testmode.txt attach to this message.

I tried to check the other connected drives (a usb key and a smart card reader) with the -dev switch and they returned these results:

USB KEY:

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HDD Device  1: /dev/sdb
HDD Model ID : SanDisk Cruzer Glide 3.0
HDD Serial No: 4C530000020418116072
HDD Revision : 1.00
HDD Size     : 29759 MB
Interface    : SCSI
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

SMART CARD READER:

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HDD Device  2: /dev/sdc
HDD Model ID : APPLE   SD Card Reader
HDD Serial No: ?
HDD Revision : 3.00
HDD Size     : 0 MB
Interface    : SCSI
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

I tried to check the NVMe with ./hdsentinel -dev /dev/nvme0 and the console returned:

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Examining hard disk configuration ...
No hard disk devices found. Please run as "root".

HDSentinel seems to identify the NVMe drive as this drive:

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HDD Device  0: /dev/sda             
HDD Model ID : APPLE SSD SM0256G
HDD Serial No: S29CNYAGC56557
HDD Revision : BXW1SA0Q
HDD Size     : 239372 MB
Interface    : S-ATA Gen3, 6 Gbps
Temperature  : Unknown °C
Highest Temp.: Unknown °C
Health       : Unknown %
Performance  : Unknown %
Power on time: 
Est. lifetime: 

The drive model is: OWC Aura Pro X2 NVMe - PCIe 3.1 x4 SSD.

Just to give you some context, I'm running HDSentinel over an Ubuntu 18.04 Live USB on an Early 2015 MacBook Pro.

[hdsentinel]

If it completes, it confirms that all drives detected, reported. I checked the testmode.txt file, see no real issues with it (except that the health/temperature of the Apple SSD is missing).

I wonder what caused that first time it could not complete, which device may blocked the execution.
You can start this way too:

./hdsentinel -enabletest -txt -r report.txt

to make a report.txt file (in addition to the testmode) file. I did not mention first as I expected that it will be blocked again (so would have no opportunity to create the report file after completion). From the report file, I can also check some details.

According what I see, the SSD is not NVMe, the output shows

Interface : S-ATA Gen3, 6 Gbps

This may suggest why it is at /dev/sda node and why there is no /dev/nvme0 device at all.

APPLE SSDs sometimes "tricky". The latest Windows version has some changes for some of them, as they may not (or by a special way) provide status information only.
I'd suggest to try a live Windows system (instead of Linux) and use Hard Disk Sentinel Pro Portable under Windows.
With that, you may immediately see the health, status, temperature etc. and can save a more detailed developer report which can
- 100% surely confirm that connection and other details as it can detect more details
- help to check if the status is still missing
- but if detected under Windows, it may give some thoughts about what to do under Linux too to improve the situation.

It is completely normal and expected that pendrives, SD cards do not have health or temperature information, only very few pendrives (and industrial memory cards) have health / temperature and status information, as described at

https://www.hdsentinel.com/kb/category/12/solid-state-drives-ssds/why-the-health-of-the-pendrivememory-card-is-unknown.html

[technicianusr]

I attached the report.txt file to this post. As for the the suggestion of trying HDSentinel Pro under Windows, I would have to detach the drive from the Macbook Pro and plug it in a PC via PCIe 3.1 x4 or an external usb enclosure. Since I don't have any of the special tools to open the Mac, nor a PC with a PCIe 3.1 x4 slot or a NVMe external usb enclosure, I can't really try this option for now. Except if there's a way to boot a Live Windows usb in a Macbook Pro without installing any special softwares...?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your report. According that, the SSD is not a PCIe (NVMe) SSD.
It may be 2280 M.2 SATA, but it is not really an NVMe SSD.

Sorry, but I wonder why/how it does not report status/health/temperature information at all. Not sure if related to the SSD or Linux itself (the drivers loaded by that).

Would be nice to check with the Windows version.

No, you do not need to remove, just you'd need to have a live Windows pendrive.
This forum topic may give some ideas: https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13810

[technicianusr]

You mean I can boot a live Windows pendrive directly in the MacBook Pro without any special softwares preinstalled on it? If so, I'll definitely try this option.

Thanks.

[joliebrousseau]

It's possible that HDSentinel is taking a while to examine your NVMe SSD. However, an hour seems like a long time. You might want to try running HDSentinel again with the -no-scan parameter to skip the initial scan and see if it loads up properly. If not, you can try checking the HDSentinel logs to see if there are any errors or warnings