Partition falied Input/Output Error

I tried the Tiger book disk trick, but my external USB drive did not show up in Tiger's Disk Utility. In Leopard 10.5.2 I managed to get Disk Utility to partition my drive using GUID. In order to make it work I had to first delete the current partition. If I did not delete the current partition I would get the Partition falied Input/Output Error. But after the old parition was deleted it worked like a charm when I created a new partition using GUID.

It appears different things work for different people. I had the same issue - WD 500gb IDE drive USB, same error msg re input/output.
My solution was to move the small 2mmx2mm white jumper on the back of the drive to the Slave slot - it was in 2C, there is also a Master slot.
Moved it to Slave, restarted, Disk Utility (not even from Install DVD), erased no questions.
Hope this helps somebody like it did me.

I encountered the same problem as everybody on this topic: input/output error (5) when trying to format a new HD. The HD is a Samsung 1 TB, external USB. I tried to format it into 2 partitions, one with MS-DOS FAT32 formatting, the other with HFS+ [Mac] formatting. In disk utility this can't be done, but even basic formatting gave me the error mentioned.

This particular formatting can be done using Terminal, but even here I got the dreaded input/output error, no matter what type of formatting I tried. I am running 10.5.3 on a 2007 dual Core iMac btw. I turned to my old G4 running 10.3.9 and here it worked flawless. No error messgae, it did what I wanted and that was that. What struck me though is that Terminal commands have also changed over the years: some were no longer existing, others were slightly altered.

So my trick was using an old Mac. No jumper settings were possible on my disk, as it was a SATA with a IDE converter [to hook it up to my old USB enclosure]

Hope this helps someone !

I got the same error when trying to format a Newer Tech 500GB MiniStack V2, which I had earlier partitioned in Tiger on the same machine into 2, HFS+ Journaled partition and a FAT32 partition.

My solution was to switch from USB to Firewire to do the partition using Disk Utility.

This did the trick for me (deleting the old partition first with the little "-" at the bottom of the partition "Volume Scheme:" box) with a Samsung 500GB 9.5mm Laptop SATA drive. Finally a solution.

Message was edited by: Brian Wilcox

I have a HP Personal Media Drive which went bad after trying to reformat from FAT32 to HFS+.

I solved it by using the pdisk terminal utility.

My drive is busy being a TM disk so I cannot reproduce the procedure in every detail, but what I did was something like this:

1. Run 'diskutil list' to find out the device name for your drive. I my case it was /dev/disk1
2. Run 'pdisk /dev/disk1'
3. Enter 'i' and follow the directions (Use default values of 512 bytes)
4. Enter 'w' to write the partition map
5. I exited and entered pdisk here, don't know if it's necessary though
6. Enter 'p' to see the partition table, I had a large free partition on #2 so;
7. Enter 'c' to create a standard partition
8. Enter '2p' to indicate it should start in the beginning of partition #2
9. Enter the size of the disk (shows in the 'p' listing), in my case it was '149g'
10. Enter 'w' to write the partition table
11. When I did this, I got a warning message saying that a disk was added which was not recognizable (or something like it).
12. Open disk utility and erase the disk "as usual".

Hope this works for someone else as well...

I'm having this same problem. I've tried repartitioning with the Tiger Install CD... no dice. Also, the drive shows up as 2TB in Disk Utility when it's "only" 500GB. The 'Partition' tab doesn't allow me to select a size other than 2TB. I'm completely out of ideas. I've even disassembled the My Book case to confirm that the SATA cable hadn't come loose. I've connected the cable to another drive, which worked fine. The only explanation I can think of is a faulty drive.

Is there anything else I should try?
Thanks

Another hat into the ring .. I had this problem, neither my MBP or black MB would format a new Seagate 750GB disk in a Vantec Nexstar USB enclosure. Disk Utility kept giving me the IO error.

Fired up my Tiger install DVD and tried the same stuff through the Disk Utility there, to no avail. Then I tried the "Erase" option rather than the "Partition" option ... which amazingly worked somehow. Can't imagine why the codepath for the single partition setup through the Erase tab is any different to the one that is invoked from the Partition tab, but for whatever reason, it seems to be.

Never tried this same trick with the Leopard Disk Utility, was just relieved that I had a working disk, so perhaps you don't need your Tiger disks to do this. YMMV.

I would just like to add that I have the same problem in OS X 10.5.5.

1 TB Cavalry external HD through USB.

I really hope Apple fixes this bug soon.

I am getting the input/output error when trying to connect a new Western Digital Passport to my emac or ibook. Disk utility not working and I tried to use the cd as well. Called WD customer support and they are saying it is the drive and to send it back to them, but I am able to mount the drive on a work computer (also ibook but intel based--my personal laptop and computer are G4 I believe). How can I fix this? Thanks!

I just installed a new Seagate Momentus (500GB, 7200) and I've tried every suggestion I can find and still can't format my drive. I thought the minor surgery I had to perform on my MBP was going to be the difficult part of upgrading my HDD, but so far that was cake compared to this I/O error problem.

Had the same problem with a samsung 120gb drive. I downloaded the macdrive 7 demo: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ and formatted the drive as HFS+ in windows. This worked like a charm and I was able to use the drive for time machine.

Had the "partition failed with the error input/output error" with a new Western Digital Passport that I just bought. It seems the company is aware of it and has a fix at http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=203&sid=108&lang=en where you can download a driver for the drive. Seems to work fine.

I purchased a Western Digital My Book Essentials 1Tb EHD. It wouldn't show up on my dual G4 (USB1) screen. Disk Utility gave me that input/output error message. Interesting, I went to 3 Mac Help Forums and had every suggestion under the sun including the drive is defective. I even spent 15 minutes with WD Tech Support. We got it to work on my iBook USB2, so it wasn't the drive. Others concluded it won't work on USB1. WD said to contact Apple.

I was ready to send it back to Best Buy, until I learned of the fix in the previous post...
a fix at http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=203&sid=108&lang=en

I downloaded the driver and it works... Unbelieveable! Thanks. 🙂
So much for the Tech Support.

Weird thing is that the WD32 *EVT SATA drive (320GB) shows up as a 2TB unformatted drive in the Sharkoon/USB enclosure. The drive has worked, then stopped after the first day.
All solutions mentioned above didn't work for me (G4, macintel, 10.4.11, 10.5.7, driver install on either, booting from system install dvd), in Parallels, XP only found an ejectable (safely remove device...) mass storage device, but not visible as disk in 'my computer'.