Leopard Disk Utility and Input/Output error messages.
Okay a bit of background:- over christmas we treated ourselves to leopard and as my laptop is now three years old I decided to do a complete reformat and installation. I used my 60GB iPod as an external harddrive and backed everything up. Installed Leopard no probs and was a very happy bunny.
The problem:- I then wanted to remove everything off my iPod. So I thought "I know I'll use Disk Utility".... I tried it with the 'default' setting and got an Input/Output error message straight away (irrespective of whether I did it as an extended journal or not.) When I tried it with the Zero Out option (can't remember exactly what it's called) it came up with the Input/Output error message right at the very end. Argh! iTunes and Finder no longer recognised it, but Disk Utility did.
My research:- After using google I saw some guys on here talking about formatting proper external harddrives using leopards disk utility and they were getting the same messages as me. It turns out it is a fault with Leopards Disk Utility. So I did what the guys recommended.
The solution:- (Thank god I had tiger!) I put in my tiger installation disk, clicked 'install tiger' and restarted the laptop. I clicked my my language, but then rather than going through the actual installation process I went to the top menu bars and chose Disk Utility (using tiger's disk one rather than my laptop's leopard one.) And erased the iPod there. Now when I quit the installation and opened my laptop up properly it worked, both iTunes and finder could see it!!! (I just had to restore my ipod in itunes - and now I'm happily transferring all my music back!)
I hope this helps someone in the same position as me!
1.33 GHz 12 PB, Mac OS X (10.5.1)