Disk Utility "Input - Output error" when attempting to erase Hard Drive

Hope that someone can point me in the right direction.
I bought an external hard drive for Windows a year back and loaded music onto it. I realized that I my MAC wasn't getting "Read / Write" privileges for the External Hard Drive, so I decided to try to Partition it and make it into a FAT readable device. It erased all data from my hard drive, but Disk Utility stopped the process and displayed an "input - output error".
Consequently, I can't initialize the external hard drive to make it usable on my MAC.
Can anyone point me in the right direction so I can "reformat" my external?
Thanks!

Hi all,
I'm having similar issues on a white macbook (2006 model). I ran into some trouble with it about a month ago, when on booting up, it showed only the folder with a question mark. Booting up from the original grey install DVD worked, so I thought the problem was most likely a faulty hard drive.
It's only after having this problem, that I came across this recall for possible faulty hard drives, that Apple offered:
http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/
Doh! Too late?
So, I got onto ebay and picked up a deal and received my new hard drive yesterday. I swapped out the original 80GB with 320GB, only to find the same input/output error described by the OP, here (also in a couple of other Apple discussion posts - see below).
Disk utility shows the new hard drive to be 2.3TB in size! Should be 320GB - but, this is also what others have described. See e.g.,:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16090313#16090313
I've run the extended testing from the CD (holding down 'D' on boot-up) and it reported no problems. Also, similar to others experiences:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16081818#16081818
So, what can the problem be?!?!?!?!?
In this post, JMPC suggests it has something to do with the size of the new internal hard drive....groan.....:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16145560?tstart=0#16145560?tstart=0
Can anyone confirm this?

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Disk Utility - Input/Output error when creating disk image

Hello!
A few days ago I was unable to turn on my Macbook Pro, and was stuck on the white screen. I've been searching around quite a lot on this forum, and before I try fixing anything, I REALLY need to back-up my files! I just bought a 2TB hard-drive, which I have partitioned to GUID and Mac OS Extended (Journaled), (it perfectly works on another Mac).
I now want to attempt to create an image of my harddrive (Macintosh HD) onto my external drive (which is empty). I've tried doing this both in 'read-only' and in 'compressed', but about halfway through, I receive a message saying "Unable to create 04/2014 backup.dmg (Input/Output) error".
I saw on another similar post that I might want to install DiskDrill or DataRescue. I'm fairly sure this is impossible for me to do, since my screen is completely white, and I'm unable to access my desktop.
I can only access Disk Utility through pressing command+R when starting my computer. Hence, I need to successfully back up my files through Disk Utility...
I'm aware that my HD may be corrupted since this is happening, but there must be a way for me to put an image on my external HD?? A few days ago, when I clicked on Repair Disk it said "Impossible to repair: invalid node structure". But now, it says that "Macintosh HD appears to be OK". I have no idea what's changed... And I can still not start my computer past the white screen...
I'm very bad with IT and computers, and have extensively tried to fix this on my own, but I'm now stuck here, with this "input/output error"...!
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
PS: I do not have Applecare, this is an old computer from 2009.

Thanks for your answer.
Yes, I thought that might be the case - but I'd taken my Mac and Logic disks to a Genius bar, and the 'Genius' had said he'd fixed the issue. I just wish he'd explained what he did and why he didn't replace the faulty disk(s)!
But is there any way around having the claim a disk, now I'm living abroad and my 'warrantee' has run out? It's going to be a pain in the fundament trying to claim a replacement set.

MacBook Disk Utility: "Input/Output Error" When Backing up my iBook

Alright, here's the skinny:
I'm backing up an iBook's system drive while in Target Disk Mode via my MacBook using DiskUtility. The drive I'm saving the image to is an HFS+ USB 2.0 enclosed standard 3.5" drive. I start the process and things go just fine--
--but then!
"The device you removed was not properly put away. Data might have been lost or damaged. Before you unplug your device, you must first select its icon in the Finder and choose Eject from the File menu."
So yeah, about five minutes into the backup, I get one of those lovely "Device Removal" notices, even though I haven't touched anything and no drive has gone unmoutned in Finder (or in /Volumes/). After this I get a plain jane "Input/Output Error" message and am left in the dark.
Here's what I've tried:
-Restarting, killing every unrelated user-level process
-Disconnecting every other device, media, and peripheral from both machines
-Running the machine in "Better Energy Savings" mode and disconnecting the PSU in case FW or USB was fritzing from the 83C of heat the computer was causing.
Alright. Somebody help.

Had issue partitioning 2TB my passport drive, got input/output error while using disk utility.
Here is what I did to get my external disk back
In Disk Utility
1) Try to use erase option first, it failed
2) Try to partition the disk, failed as well.
3) Then try erase option again, then ... it worked !!

Disk utility input/output error, my macintosh HD won't mount and when restoring to another HD fails after setup...

Disk utility, input/output error, setup fail

Had issue partitioning 2TB my passport drive, got input/output error while using disk utility.
Here is what I did to get my external disk back
In Disk Utility
1) Try to use erase option first, it failed
2) Try to partition the disk, failed as well.
3) Then try erase option again, then ... it worked !!

Hard Drive "Input Output" Error When Attempting to Format

A friend just gave me a nice PowerBook that seems to be in need of a fresh OS and when attempting to format the hard drive I am getting an "Input Output" error. Any suggestions to overcome this issue and format the drive?

Hi all,
I'm having similar issues on a white macbook (2006 model). I ran into some trouble with it about a month ago, when on booting up, it showed only the folder with a question mark. Booting up from the original grey install DVD worked, so I thought the problem was most likely a faulty hard drive.
It's only after having this problem, that I came across this recall for possible faulty hard drives, that Apple offered:
http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/hd/repairextension/
Doh! Too late?
So, I got onto ebay and picked up a deal and received my new hard drive yesterday. I swapped out the original 80GB with 320GB, only to find the same input/output error described by the OP, here (also in a couple of other Apple discussion posts - see below).
Disk utility shows the new hard drive to be 2.3TB in size! Should be 320GB - but, this is also what others have described. See e.g.,:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16090313#16090313
I've run the extended testing from the CD (holding down 'D' on boot-up) and it reported no problems. Also, similar to others experiences:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16081818#16081818
So, what can the problem be?!?!?!?!?
In this post, JMPC suggests it has something to do with the size of the new internal hard drive....groan.....:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16145560?tstart=0#16145560?tstart=0
Can anyone confirm this?

Help -- backup data with disk utility, input/output error.

My problem started when my MacBook Pro computer (with OsX) froze. When I restarted, the startup screen stayed on for a long time. Now, the startup screen stays on for a few seconds and then shuts off. I do NOT have a recent backup of my data. I have tried the following:
Went onto the recovery partition, used Disk Utility. When I verified the disk, it said it needed repair. When I tried to repair the disk, it said it could not be repaired.
I then tried to copy a disk image of the hard drive onto my external hard drive, but it says there is an "input/output error" and won't allow it. How else can I backup files on my computer at this point?

Had issue partitioning 2TB my passport drive, got input/output error while using disk utility.
Here is what I did to get my external disk back
In Disk Utility
1) Try to use erase option first, it failed
2) Try to partition the disk, failed as well.
3) Then try erase option again, then ... it worked !!

Disk Utility Input/Output Error

I am trying to make digital backups of some home movie DVDs I have created in the last few years with iMovie and iDVD. Every time I use the iMac to try and make a disk image with Disk Utility, it gets about halfway through the process and then I get an error message that says, "Unable to create "disk3.dmg" - Input/output error." I usually have better luck on my older Powerbook G4, though I sometimes get the same message there. Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening...and how I can fix it? Of note, I have tried different names for the disk image, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

You're going to love this...
I had been getting the exact same error, even after I've done full image backups of my main volume just a few months before. Since I couldn't perform the image backup, I tried copying important files manually. When copying some 3000 files from my Documents folder, the *entire copy* failed...one file was corrupted and was unreadable. So instead of just asking if you want to skip and continue, the entire operation fails. I deleted the corrupted file, and booted from an alternate system, and voila! I successfully created an image of my main volume and saved it to an external HD in about 15 mins. No problems whatsoever. Unbelievable.
Make sure your DVDs are clean, ie, such that all the files can be read correctly.
What bugs me most, is that the bad file was not detected when I ran the Disk Repair utility on the main volume (from another booted drive of course).
What am I missing such that I can detect issues like this in the future?

Disk utility 'input/output error' message?

I am "creating an image" of a DVD using disk utility (prior to making a copy on a blank DVD disk). Why am I now rec'ing an 'input/output error' message? I have already copied several other DVDs from the same author (with her permission, they are not copywrited.) w/o a problem.
What's going on? original damaged? an incorrect step on my part? some sort of space problem? ( I have tons of room on my iMac.)
Thanks for your help.

Take a look at Cinematize 2, I've used it with iMovie 06 and iDVD 08. It has several modes of converting the data. One mode is called "lossless".
For the job you're doing you may prefer to use iMovie 06 instead of iMovie 08 (I would).
iMovie 06 and iDVD 08 is a terrific combination.
Your workflow would go something like this.
Use Cinematize 2 to create a Quicktime file from the DVD.
http://www.miraizon.com/products/products.html
Important that file into iMovie 06.
From iMovie 06, share to iDVD 08 (assuming you want a DVD).

Input/output error when attempting to restore external HDD?

I have an old 1TB external HDD that corrupted a while ago, the drive still mounts and i can still see the files inside the drive, unfortunately opening the drive up crashes finder. As i have another 2TB external drive, my next idea was to create a second partition in my 2TB drive and then restore the old 1TB drive into the second partition of the 2TB drive using the disk utility. After a few minutes it comes up with the error message INPUT/OUTPUT error and then stops restoring it.
Any ideas folks as to where to go from here? what the problem might be? or what to try next?
many thanks
Ali

Ali,
your external 1 TB HDD might have a hardware fault which is preventing access to its files. Have you tried running your MacBook Pro’s Apple Hardware Test, to see if it can detect a hardware-related problem with your external 1 TB HDD?

Input/Output Error USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I recently started having problems with an external hard drive setup that I did not have prior to trying to setup the drive to be compatible with Time Machine.
The hard drive enclosure that I have has 2 bays for two SATA drives. I have used this enclosure without any problems until I tried to get 1 drive to act as the backup drive for Time Machine and the other to be storage. I formatted them using Drive Genius. I used the option for GUILD or GUIL which it said was the better format for using with Time Machine.
The first problem I ran into since reformatting the drives is I got an "input/output" error the first couple times I connected the drive via USB to my Mac. I could still use the drives but I got weird errors every once in a while like "input/output error" or "device was not ejected properly" even though the device had not been unplugged.
Now the drives will not mount using OS 10.5.5. The drives show up when I open Disk Utility, but I cannot get them to mount. I have ran Disk Utility First Aid, and it says the drives are fine. There is one error that shows up when I run the "Repair Disk" feature. It reads "Invalid content in Journal". But Disk Utility also says "The volume was repaired successfully".
I have seen some posts when I do a search in google about this issue and it seems this is a known issue. Every suggestion I see says to insert your Tiger DVD and reformat the drive using that and the problem will be solved. The only problem with that is I have a lot of important files on the drive that I cannot lose. I had the files backed up until I moved them to the new drive a while back. Now I do not have a backup because I was in the process of switching to bigger drives and erased the old drives after doing so because everything was working fine.
I am hoping someone out there may have some suggestions (other than erasing the drive) to get my dives to mount so I can transfer the data off to another drive and reformat after.
Thanks,
Paul Rugg

I have similar problems with my USB external HD. Reformatting or repartitioning will not solve your problem. I've tried that 2 times already. The problem will reappear. My HD was running great until last month, when it suddenly without warning disappears from disk utility and the mac altogether. It not only dismounts itself, but also ejects itself, while still physically connected and the power is still on. The HD has its own power supply of course and is directly connected to one of the iMac USB ports. I have erased, repartitioned, disk verified, rebuild spotlight indexes, cleared PRAM and NVRAM, but nothing has solved the problem.
It is application independent, and not related to like iTunes as another post had suggested. Nothing to do with Mac applications. It seems to be USB related.
Messages in the Console seem to indicate something wrong with 'USB transactions passed their expiration point' and 'USB cannot enumerate something', but these statements are a bit cryptic to me. Perhaps an Apple system engineer can someday shed some light here.
thanks much for any assistance.

Input/output error when installing CS6 on my MacBook Air 10.10 Yosemite

I have the CS6 disk and I keep getting input/output error when I try installing it on my new MacBook Air 10.10 with Yosemite.

sounds like you have a damaged cd.
Downloadable installation files available:
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Acrobat: XI, X | 9,8 | 9 standard
Premiere Elements: 13 |12 | 11, 10 | 9, 8, 7
Photoshop Elements: 13 |12 | 11, 10 | 9,8,7
Lightroom: 5.7.1| 5 | 4 | 3
Captivate: 8 | 7 | 6 | 5
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Download and installation help for Adobe links
Download and installation help for Prodesigntools links are listed on most linked pages. They are critical; especially steps 1, 2 and 3. If you click a link that does not have those steps listed, open a second window using the Lightroom 3 link to see those 'Important Instructions'.
window using the Lightroom 3 link to see those 'Important Instructions'.

SOLVED: Getting an Input/Output error when accessing certain files

My system started failing a few days ago because of sudden Input/Output errors when trying to access certain files. It was running fine until various applications started crashing like for example Pidgin (in retrospect probably because of DBus crashing). I decided to reboot and now can't login anymore because the DBus module fails to load which in turn means that HAL doesn't load either and so I can't use my keyboard to login.
The error message I get from DBus is that it can't access the file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/org.freedesktop.PolicyKit.conf because of an Input/Output error. I tried to fix/see what was wrong using the arch livecd. Because I thought my problem had to do with a pacman update that had failed before I'd rebooted, I updated my system and I noticed that when pacman tried to access other files it came back with the same error message. The files seemed pretty random, one of them was fakeroot.conf and then several library files like libfaad (sorry this is kind of vague but I'm away from home right now and can't go online very often so I'm writing this from memory).
I'm guessing its a hard drive problem because checking the filesystem for errors came back with nothing. I was just wondering whether anyone had any other ideas before I go and reinstall. I'm going back home tomorrow so I'll be able to follow any advice/reinstall then.
Last edited by siell (2010-04-08 17:01:37)

UPDATE
It seems to be fixed! The second run of e2fsck fixed some more issues and the files that were causing the problems earlier seemed to have bad inodes. Boots fine now and I can get into my system. I checked and I still have a reasonable amount of free space so I don't think that was the reason ... I have no idea how the filesystem got so corrupted out of nowhere.
A few things are different, for example, it asked me to unlock the keyring and I couldn't mount my external encrypted drive anymore and had to do it manually with cryptsetup. e2fsck made quite a few changes so I imagine it's due to that. Shouldn't be to hard to fix though.
Thanks for your help!

I get the following error when formatting a external hard drive. Partition failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory

I get the following error when formatting a external hard drive.
Partition failed with the error:
POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory
I have a Macbook pro 13" A1278. I purchased it around december 2010. I have a HHD 3.5" drive desktop select II 1.5TB. I purchased it around Febuary/March 2011 to use with my Macbook pro. I formatted it and moved all my files to there, I got it so my macbook's hard drive wouldn't brake and I lose everything on my macbook.
Is there any fixes?

First, try a system reset. It cures many ills and it's quick, easy and harmless...
Hold down the on/off switch and the Home button simultaneously until the screen blacks out or you see the Apple logo. Ignore the "Slide to power off" text if it appears. You will not lose any apps, data, music, movies, settings, etc.
If the Reset doesn't work, try a Restore. Note that it's nowhere near as quick as a Reset. From iTunes, select the iPad/iPod and then select the Summary tab. Follow directions for Restore and be sure to say "yes" to the backup. You will be warned that all data (apps, music, movies, etc.) will be erased but, as the Restore finishes, you will be asked if you wish the contents of the backup to be copied to the iPad/iPod. Again, say "yes."

Input/output error when copying a DVD

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I just figured out how to get around the problem. Download Burn and use it to burn the VIDEO_TS file to a new disk. It must be something that Apple adds to make it hard to copy DVDs made from non-Apple software.

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DVD files use MPEG-2 encoding and can't be played via QuickTime Player without extra software.
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Disk Utility "Input - Output error" when attempting to erase Hard Drive

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