Partition falied Input/Output Error

I'm trying to use an external USB 2.0 WD250GB drive for Time Machine. The drive was attached to a Windows machine and works perfectly. However, when I attach it to my MBP and try to format it I get the error "Partition falied Input/Output Error". I'm attempting to format for 1 GUID partition HFS+ journaled.

This doesn't appear to be a hardware issue because I can reattach the drive to the XP machine, format it and it runs just fine.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks.

MBP, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Oct 31, 2007 5:40 AM

69 replies

Jul 14, 2009 1:09 PM in response to John Snarski

I have 2 iomega 160 gig minimax drives on seperate USB connections.

I just upgraded to 10,5,7 from Tiger

One drives works fine the other gives me an input/output error

Having changed the bad drive from USB to firewire 400 works fine and recognises the drive as an iomega.

Seems to be a problem in the OS,

Jul 14, 2009 1:13 PM in response to horse goose

Oh, the tail continues. The other drive also failed after a time.

Then on Firewire 400 it works like a dream.

Apple need to solve this bug.

Shakkie

Level 1

0 points

Jul 31, 2009 2:40 PM in response to V Beckmann

It works on a Mac with Tiger but not on one with 10.5.7.
I bought the extern HD today and it does'nt work with this version of Mac. Also not with the driver.

Message was edited by: Shakkie

bwente

Level 1

0 points

Aug 25, 2009 5:56 PM in response to eljonco

I had the same problem last night. I took my drive over to a friends house to transfer some media files, he uses windows, but used MacDrive to access the drive. I got it back home and it would not mount. It spins up a bit, then a bit of clicking, then it appears in Disk Utility. But is incorrectly identified as a 2 TB drive, when is actually a 1 TB drive. I opened the case and found it is a WD10EACS Western Digital Caviar Green ATA hard drive. I tried first to use Disk Warrior but does not appear. Since my friend has most of the files, I could reformat the drive but Disk Utility fails to do that as well.

Is there any hope? I order Snow Leopard today, does anyone think that will have a solution?

bwente

Level 1

0 points

Sep 2, 2009 5:29 AM in response to bwente

Upgraded to Snow Leopard. Disk utility error, POSIX reports: Could not allocate enough memory.

I have given up on the data. I guess it is time to give up on the drive too. I just wish I knew what happen to avoid this in the future.

mills42

Level 1

0 points

Oct 27, 2009 9:44 PM in response to skallu

Yay, that worked for me too. Switched from USB to firewire and diskutility could format.

I was getting this error:
Partitioning encountered error on disk disk1: Input/output error (5)

Thanks!

Nov 29, 2009 1:23 AM in response to John Snarski

I think I found a solution, check out full instructions:

http://www.marcosebastian.com/?p=145

Feb 9, 2010 2:28 AM in response to John Snarski

Folks, after scouring the webs, I see that this is really a common problem for anyone trying to manipulate storage devices with Disk Utility. Several people have had look using older mac hardware and older operating systems. I find that to be sort of sad that this is the only solution for those people. However, none of that worked for me. I was trying to partition one of my old ipods (click wheel) for GUID so that i could use it for backup/maintenance/troubleshooting for my intel macbook pro. Disk utility just would NOT let me erase it or repartition it - giving me input/output errors.

Finally, what worked for me was to make a GParted Live CD (search for it, it's free open source), boot the computer with that, and use the GParted Utility to do it. It was a breeze!

Apr 5, 2010 9:16 PM in response to Samir Patel

Yup, which is the solution posted above.

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Partition falied Input/Output Error