I am receiving blk_update_request: critical medium error, dev sdb, sector. What does it mean and what can I do to avoid it?

This is the error shown after I shutdown:

I am new at using linux, and I am currently using Ubuntu 20.04. I use Ubuntu via a external HDD(WD 1TB). The HDD is two years old.

Recently this error has been popping whenever I shutdown and the OS too is lagging.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

1 Answer

This is a good indicator of a failure in your hard drive. You can run the smart tools to help confirm this, but you should probably try to ensure that you have a good backup of your data, and plan on looking for a new drive.