Unable to access or format the external hard disk

Question

Just recently got this issue regarding my external hard disk. Few days back it was working absolutely fine and it could be recognized by my system properly but all of a sudden it stopped recognizing it.

This is the output of lsusb

~$ lsusb
   Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bc2:ab26 Seagate RSS LLC 
   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
   Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:58ea Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 
   Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0cf3:e500 Atheros Communications, Inc. 
   Bus 001 Device 002: ID 413c:301a Dell Computer Corp. 
   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0bc2:ab26 Seagate RSS LLC is the device I'm talking about. It's a 1 TB external HDD.

This is the output for the partitions

 ~$ ls /dev/ | grep sd
    sda
    sdb
    sdb1
    sdb2

On the partition /dev/sda the HDD is there but it can't be recognized elsewhere. This is the output for sudo fdisk -l

sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for user: 
Disk /dev/loop0: 91 MiB, 95408128 bytes, 186344 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop1: 34.6 MiB, 36216832 bytes, 70736 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop2: 2.3 MiB, 2355200 bytes, 4600 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop3: 13 MiB, 13619200 bytes, 26600 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop4: 140.7 MiB, 147496960 bytes, 288080 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop5: 14.5 MiB, 15208448 bytes, 29704 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop6: 3.7 MiB, 3878912 bytes, 7576 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/sdb: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: EF4F5FE4-9332-4A5A-AB50-A232192D5FBA

Device       Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1     2048    1050623    1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/sdb2  1050624 3907028991 3905978368  1.8T Linux filesystem

I tried mounting it with sudo mount /dev/sda /mnt but it gave output as mount: /mnt: can't read superblock on /dev/sda.

I tried to remove or clear those superblocks with fsck.msdos, dosfsck, fsck.vfat but the output for all of them was

0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 8.7022e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s

I tried to format the MBR in the drive but it was of no help

~$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr bs=512 count=1
0+0 records in
0+0 records out
0 bytes copied, 8.7022e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s

Other method that I tried was hfsplus but it was of no help at all either. Currently I'm using Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS. If anyone could help me by proving a solution to it then I would appreciate that help and if anyone need any further info then I would be glad to provide. Thanks in advance.

EDIT

This is the output when trying to access the HDD with smartctl

~$ sudo smartctl --scan 
   /dev/sdb -d scsi # /dev/sdb, SCSI device

Answer 1

taken from https://github.com/gmircea/Linux/wiki/Install-Guide-Debian $ echo options usb-storage quirks=0bc2:ab26:u | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist_uas_0bc2.conf $ sudo update-initramfs -u (not tried)