POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory

Hi, I've got a HP SimpleSave 2Tb external hard drive that I'm trying to fix for a friend, they said it stopped working so I plugged it in to my iMac and Finder told me I needed to initialize the disk because there were no volumes on it, so I tried everything in Disk Utility, Partitioning, erasing, restoring, all the tricks and nothing worked. Every time I got the same error : "Disk Erase failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory"
I tried some diskutil and fdisk commands in Terminal and still nothing works.
I was wondering if there's ANYTHING I can do to try and get it back? I don't even need to get the files back just the hard drive itself. Please help if you know anything.

Thanks in advance
Harry

iMac 20", Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 8, 2011 3:46 AM

36 replies

Apr 12, 2014 7:42 PM in response to stoked7

Hi. Thanks very much for this suggestion. I found a Firewire cable and tried to erase the disk—with the 7-pass method–and I am not getting the error. However, the estimated time is a whopping 48 DAYS, 6 hours! Is that normal?

Aug 22, 2015 2:14 AM in response to sheilafrombelmont

Guys,

The below Quick fix helps to resolve this. I managed to solve exactly the same issue using these steps; only catch being you will need to let go all your data after these steps for the Volume to be accessible again.

http://www.macissues.com/2014/04/05/how-to-fix-deep-formatting-problems-with-os- x-drives/

dfmpgh

Level 1

0 points

Feb 12, 2016 2:09 PM in response to HJATKINS

I just had a similar problem. For me, at least, once I figured it out the solution was startlingly easy: while Disk Utility on Yosemite would not format it no matter what I tried, using the one on El Capitan appears to have worked fine (other than its attempts to unmount the disk on my behalf failed, but I could unmount it myself without any difficulty).

Your mileage may vary (and so might mine: it will be interesting to see if all continues to work OK into the future).

Jun 9, 2016 7:48 PM in response to Silly rabbit

Hello dear,

I have an the same issue with an internal Hard Disk

please I need your help. I'm trying to format an old iMac 2008, but I tryed a lot of different ways with no success.

"Posix reports: the operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory."

I created 4 discs of boot, El Capitan, Mavericks, Lion, etc.

Is possible to format with a Windows 7 stick??

Is possible to clean or reset the internal hard disk by terminal ??? without open the iMac?

How is the best way to do fix this please?

thanks a lot

Eric Root

Level 10

685,221 points

Jun 10, 2016 10:29 AM in response to facoriolano

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. You can link to this one.

Aug 9, 2017 12:51 PM in response to KJK555

what if this didn't work like the mount came back?

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POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory