[arch-general] Problem formatting/initialising new WD GameDrive USB disk

[Jeanette C.]

Hey hey,
I have just got a new Western Digital USB drive, GameDrive, an 8TB medium. I 
can't however format it or even create a new partition table.
I am running a fairly up-to-date system:
Kernel: 5.6.19-rt12-1-rt #1 SMP PREEMPT_RT

The device is recognised upon connection, also lsblk shows it.

blkid however doesn't show it. Fdisk can't open it, reporting:
fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdb: Input/output error
parted will start with it and show its identifier and size, but not even 
create a partition table, complaining about an input/output error.

Here is a snippet from dmesg:
[1206985.479621] usb 1-4.1: new high-speed USB device number 95 using ehci-pci
[1206985.623255] usb 1-4.1: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=2631, bcdDevice=50.06
[1206985.623261] usb 1-4.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=1
[1206985.623264] usb 1-4.1: Product: Game Drive
[1206985.623266] usb 1-4.1: Manufacturer: Western Digital
[1206985.623268] usb 1-4.1: SerialNumber: 3030303030303030303030303030303030303030
[1206985.624147] usb-storage 1-4.1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[1206985.630644] scsi host6: usb-storage 1-4.1:1.0
[1206986.679886] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       Game Drive       5006 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[1206986.680412] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[1206986.684981] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[1206986.685480] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 15628052480 512-byte logical blocks: (8.00 TB/7.28 TiB)
[1206986.685484] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 4096-byte physical blocks
[1206986.686601] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[1206986.686604] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08
[1206986.690364] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[1206986.690369] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1206986.701963] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 device offline or changed
[1206986.701969] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[1206986.701977] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[1206986.702009] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 device offline or changed
[1206986.702011] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[1206986.702017] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[1206986.702061] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[1206986.702080] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#0 device offline or changed
[1206986.702081] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x0 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
[1206986.702087] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
...
I know that the Western Digital USB drives are prone to have issues upon 
setup, but I'm stuck with it.

Can anyone help, suggest further action? I'd very much prefer to stay on the 
commandline.

TIA and best wishes,

Jeanette

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