Ubuntu – EXT4-fs error on Toshiba Tecra with WD SSD

bootssd

I'm not a new user of Ubuntu (8 years and counting) but this is my first post, as I cannot seem to find an answer to this particular problem. I had Ubuntu 18.04 installed on a Toshiba Tecra and fitted a Western Digital Green 120Gb SSD. All went well initially, then after a while at boot it would start to fail with the error message

INSERT DISK IN DRIVE THEN PRESS ANY KEY.

I thought perhaps the SSD was a dud, so I replaced it, reinstalled 18.04, same happened. I then tried a clean install of 19.10 (Budgie) and all was going well for a few weeks and then yesterday it crashed out and displayed an

EXT4-fs error

related to the SSD (I presume). See screenshot. I am running 19.10 on an old HP630 with the same WD SSD and it's giving me no problems at all.

Any ideas what the problem is on my Toshiba? Thanks!

Best Answer

partial pending answer...

We're looking to solve SATA SSD disk related errors.

File system check...

  • boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB
  • open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
  • type sudo fdisk -l
  • identify the /dev/sdXX device name for your "Linux Filesystem"
  • type sudo fsck -f /dev/sdXX, replacing sdXX with the number you found earlier
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot

BIOS check/update...

With sudo dmidecode -s bios-version we learned that your current BIOS version is 3.9. Checking the Toshiba web site we find that the current BIOS is version 4.3. (and interestingly v4.0 comes with 'Improved SSD related system stability').

We don't have a Windows environment installed, so we can't install the BIOS update using Windows.

But we can install the BIOS updates from Linux! See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqDUCfU-e-A for instructions. (unetbootin, FreeDOS (http://www.freedos.org/), and BIOS .exe files).