How do I fix this hard drive?

Question

I recently bought a 2TB WD Black hard drive and installed it in an enclosure to use as media storage for my Micca Spect media player. The installation went well and I booted into Ubuntu (14.04 LTS with full drive and home folder encryption) to format the drive. I don't recall creating any partitions, I just clicked on the main drive selection and formatted it in NTFS. It looked like everything went well, until the next time I plugged it in. Now, the GUI of the hard drive in the 'Disks' program shows several partitions that I know I didn't intentionally create and I get different errors when I try to delete them or reformat them. The drive also appears twice in the sidebar. I'll include images and as much detail as possible.

First, here is a screenshot of the free space and partitions:

Here is what it looks like when I click on the other entry for the same hard drive:

Note that for this entry, the "format" option and other options are grayed out and I can't do anything. Also this entry remains in the sidebar when I disconnect the hard drive.

When I click on Partition 1 the device path is /dev/sdb1 and for partition 2 it is /dev/sdb2 while BOTH free space entries are /dev/sdb .

When I click on 'Partition 1', click the minus sign, and choose 'remove' I get the following error:

Error deleting partition /dev/sdb1: Command-line `parted --script "/dev/sdb" "rm 1"' exited with non-zero exit status 1:   
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label (udisks-error-quark, 0)  

When I do the same for partition 2, I get this error:

Error deleting partition /dev/sdb2: Command-line `parted --script "/dev/sdb" "rm 2"' exited with non-zero exit status 1:   
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label (udisks-error-quark, 0)  

When I try to reformat either partition I get this error:

Error synchronizing after initial wipe: Timed out waiting for object (udisks-error-quark, 0)  

I was getting another error before that I am now having trouble reproducing, but it said something along the lines of "it's possible the drive was formatted without being partitioned" or something like that, which sounds like what I did.

I tried erasing and reformatting several different ways and always get an error. There is no data on the drive, and it's brand new. All I want to do is wipe it clean and restore it to the way it was when I got it so I can try partitioning and formatting it again. I want a single 2TB partition formatted in NTFS to store movies on for playing off my Micca Spect media player. I would really appreciate some help here, I'm hoping I didn't just destroy a brand new and expensive hard drive.

A note about my computer skills: I prefer GUI solutions, however I am able to use the command line provided you walk me through it. Again, there's no data or anything, all I want is a blank 2TB NTFS formatted hard drive. As a last resort, I would be willing to pay someone to fix it, or would this be covered under warranty? Do you think I can call NewEgg and get a replacement? After all, I did follow the instructions that came with the enclosure (although, the problem seems to be with the drive.)

Thank you in advance for any help. This drive cost about $150 and I need it working within the next week, so I would be very happy if someone is able to help me fix it.

UPDATE 12/21/2014:

Thank you for the answers, what ended up working was running gparted, creating a new partition with the default ms-dos filesystem, and then formatting that partition with NTFS, all done with gparted. I guess the default "Disks" utility could not read the hard drive properly, it looks like I formatted with NTFS without first creating a partition. Anyway, all it working well now. I haven't checked if it works with the Micca Spect yet, but the drive itself is working.

Solution

Maybe the "Micca Spect media player" you mention did some formatting of the HD on it's own, I'm not sure if you were trying to use the HD with the player already. And does "The installation went well and I booted into Ubuntu (14.04 LTS with full drive and home folder encryption)" refer to anything that was done to the HD in question?

I wouldn't use Disks (gnome-disk-utility) for any serious partitioning, it lists the Partitioning as "Unknown ()" for /dev/sdb, and there shouldn't be a 2nd entry for a regular HD - it doesn't even list a device either. Maybe it doesn't know about or has bugs with GPT partitioning, which I'm suspecting is the problem, especially given your error "... without being partitioned." But your error messages mention parted, could still be Disks' problem though.

Try gparted instead, it's a nice reliable gui for parted, and knows about GPT partitioning. May need to write a new Partition table too, then partition/format.

And could run sudo parted -l to see partition info about all your devices. (For fun, sudo fdisk -l would show similar info, but it doesn't know about GPT).

I would also consider the possibility that the HD enclosure you're using is doing something funny, or the USB cable, hub, ports, etc... taking the HD out of the enclosure & plugging the HD directly into a computer is a backup plan.

Searching for the "Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label (udisks-error-quark, 0)" message gets a few results where the HD is failing too...

Comments

[gyropyge]

Despite their prices and heavy advertising, WD drives are among the least reliable brands available. Factory recertified Seagate drives are significantly more trustworthy. As to the difficulties you've described, I wish to make three suggestions. Please use gparted more for partitioning and formatting, and reserve the use of that "Disk Utility" primarily for diagnostics. Please avoid using NTFS without a very good reason. Lastly, beware, Newegg refuses to pay return shipping on defective hardware they sell. They and I butted heads about this last year.

[jdiah]

This worked well, thank you for being clear with your instructions. To clarify, all I needed to do was run gparted, create a new partition, then format it with NTFS.

[Xen2050]

You're welcome. Disks is nice to quickly see what drive's mounted where, unmount, or it's somewhat mysterious "eject" and "power off" for USB drives seems to work ok. It can be dangerous too, a quick Ctrl-F, tabs, arrows & enter could do a secure wipe (overwrite with zeros) with barely any warning about not recovering files. I stick with gparted for any writing