Leopard Disk Utility and Input/Output error messages.

This post is describing a problem I had and how I managed to fix it. When I was researching the Input/Output error message I was getting a couple of people had mentioned this fix on the apple discussion boards, so I thought I would add my fix to support them. (Isn't google fab!) I've no idea if this is the right place for this so please bear with me.
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!

I took it to work to use my Windows PC to try and format the drive, but got the same problem. I figured either the drive (it's a 2.5" that used to be inside my AlBook) or the external housing it lives is was faulty. Only way I could test without spending more money is by putting the 2.5" drive inside my powerbook, and booting the (Ti) powerbook from a bootable firewire ipod. I successfully booted from the ipod, and had the same problem with the now internal drive: only visible in disk utility, any attempt to erase fails. Also, I plugged the small 10 GB drive that WAS in the TiBook (but which I removed to put the other, problematic drive in) into the external housing, and it connected to other machines just fine.
Turns out the problem is the hard drive itself.
So now my question becomes: If disk utility can see the hard disk when it is connected (I have it back in the external enclosure now), but gives "input/output error" messages when I try to erase/format it, is there any way I can salvage this drive? It's an 80 GB drive, and I was looking forward to making it my internal TiBook drive (replacing the old 10 GB drive that's in there now).

Similar Messages

  • 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).

  • HT4790 My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages: Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck (the same with

    My Mac OS Lion 10.7 FileVaulted HD does not boot, prohibitory sign, stop sign appears some minutes after boot starts. Disk Utility repair shows four error messages:
    Unable to bootstrap transaction group 2517: inconsistent crosscheck
    No valid commit checkpoint found
    The volume xxxxxxxxxxxxxx(here it shows physical volume number) was found corrupt and can not be repaired.
    Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
    Error: Storage system verify or repair failed.
    (the same with 2518, 2519 and 2520 transaction group)
    I suppose it is serious bug in Mac OS Lion managing FileVault and wonder what the help could be?

    Most likely culprit is your Lacie drives which are notorious for flaky power supplies which cause just the sort of erratic behaviour that you describe. Have had similar issues myself. Lacie has been good about replacing my power converter-- twice. If you have seven of them, good luck finding the bad one or more. Like I said, the behaviour is erratic. Sometimes it'll work sometimes not. I can't comment on Samsung drives because I've never used them and have never heard anything about them. Same with Softraid. Why not just use Disk Utility. Sounds like you're ready for an external hardware raid. This will be much faster, much more reliable, and may even be cheaper than seven firewire drives. Check out G Tech, and Maxx Digital for starters.
    Best of luck
    Terry

  • Need assistance with my Porsche Design LaCie Time Capsule... It is not operating at all.. I have ran the diagnostic via the Disk Utility and under the error reading it runs the repair and then says it not about to repair what do I do... Thanks

    Need assistance with my Porsche Design LaCie Time Capsule... It is not operating at all.. I have ran the diagnostic via the Disk Utility and under the error reading it runs the repair and then says it not about to repair what do I do... Thanks

    LaCie doesnt make ANYTHING.  It contains a Seagate 3.5" 5400RPM HD.
    Check the HD on another computer, if nothing, your SATA bridge is fried, or the HD (very unlikely since its a Seagate inside)
    Youd have to crack open the HD, remove the SATA bridge cart thats plugged into the HD and put the HD into an enclosure or a HD dock to get the data
    those external HD use a 50 cent SATA bridge famous for failing.  The curse of all the good HD externals is the junk 3rd party SATA bridges attached to them that crash and burn.
    Sata bridge:

  • Input/Output error message when uploading a DVD to copy.

    Hi All,
    I have been getting this message "Unable to Create: input/output error." when trying to upload a dvd to burn using Disk Utility . At first I thought it was a problem with the disc so I had a friend of my send me another copy. This was 2 discs. The first disc I get the error message the 2nd disc copied perfectly. My friend sent me the first disc again and I still get the same error message. It uploads about 2/3 of the disc and then the error message shows up. I tried on both my desktop and laptop and same error message on both. Both are using Leopard.
    This is not a copyright protected disc. This is a personal disc.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks in Advance.

    I have exactly the same problem. I'm trying to create images for all my DVDs created on Windows Vista. Unfortunately, when around 80% of the disk is already read, I'm getting:
    6/4/08 9:54:06 PM Disk Utility[1872] Unable to create “Lena - prawie 2 lata.cdr”. (Input/output error). I have been able to reproduce this issue on 3 DVDs so far (all filled with 4GB of data).
    The only DVD that I was able to duplicate was 1.4GM is size. Any suggestions?
    Regards,
    Marcin

  • Input /  output error message in Quicktime 6.0.2

    I recently installed Mac OS X [10.2 Jaguar version ] on my old G3 266mhz computer ... After installing the new operating system I was really excited about it and foud that it was quite stable and worked well ... I tested the applications and found that iTunes , iMovie , iCal , IE 5.0 browser , Sherlock and all the applications worked good though the Browsing speed on Internet was slow due to the G3 processor ... I found that my Quicktime 6.0.2 played only Quicktime compatible files and did not open any Avi or Mpeg formats .... In other words I could not open to watch my favourite movies on VCD 's .... I tried to browse all websites to get an idea to find a solution to this problem but nothing has worked so far ... I even tried to use my old Quicktime player listed in my Mac OS 9.1 applications folder and it still would not work either ...I used to play movies on Avseq .dat file MPEG formats before without any problem ... now I am waiting on any Mac expert to tell me how to get my Quicktime player in both Mac OS X application and the older Quicktime player in Mac OS 9.1 applications to playback MPEG files ... I keep getting the message INPUT / OUTPUT ERROR everytime I try to play the MPEG movies.Can anybody help me out with this problem ...
    G3 powerbook   Mac OS 9.1.x  

    You should update your OS X version of QuickTime to version 6.5.2.
    QuickTime can play MPEG-1 files (you may need to change the name of the extension from .DAT to .mpg).
    Other players like VLC http://www.videolan.org can also play MPEG files and MPEG Streamclip can convert them to QT formats. Both are free.

  • I'm trying to restore in disk utility and i get Error (22)

    I have a sparse.image file that i wanted to retore to another sparse.image file and I put them on the restore line then hit
    restore. Over half way through this it brings this up: an error 22 occurred while copying. invalid argument

    17    dsNoPackErr     package 0 not present [List Manager]
    18    dsNoPk1         package 1 not present [Reserved by Apple]
    19    dsNoPk2         package 2 not present [Disk Initialization]
    20    dsNoPk3         package 3 not present [Standard File]
    21    dsNoPk4         package 4 not present [Floating-Point Arithmetic]
    22    dsNoPk5         package 5 not present [Transcendental Functions]
    23    dsNoPk6         package 6 not present [International Utilities]
    24    dsNoPk7         package 7 not present [Binary/Decimal Conversion]

  • Disk Utility and Repair Permissions errors

    When I ran Repair Permissions before the 10.5.2 update, I would get the message:
    Warning: SUID ... blah blah has been modified and will not be repaired.
    Now after the 10.5.2 update it says:
    ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities", etc.
    About these messages Apple says "You can safely ignore these messages. They are accurate but not a cause for concern."
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306925
    Anyone like to shed light on what these messages mean? Curious minds like to know.
    Thanks!

    I have the same issue - G4 QuickSilver, Dual 1 GHz, 1G RAM. Finally cancelled Repair Permissions after 18 hours. It was listing every application, and the files within each application, on my boot drive. I'm concerned that I can't use Permissions any more without falling into the same trap.
    Also looking for help on this.
    Thanks.

  • 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 !!

  • Macbook 2.1 and Western Digital BPVT input/output errors

    Hi.    After a hard drive failure in my macbook I tried upgrading to a 320GB Western digital BPVT hard disk. Unfortunately the macbook can't seem to read the disk properly when plugged in internally and it shows the capacity as 2.3TB and gives an input/output error when I try to erase the disk (it does show correctly the Description WDC WD3200BPVT).
    The hard disk itself works.  If I plug it into the sata caddy my windows 7 PC can see it, format, write and delete to it. AND if I plug the same caddy into the macbook as an external disk it can read it and write to it etc.  The only difference I can think of is the caddy doesn't support S.M.A.R.T and as soon as the disk is put in internally I get the 2.3TB capacity and input/output errors.  That said I put the hard disk in a HP laptop and it recognised the hard disk internally and installed the OS ok.
    I tested the macbook with a scorpio blue BEVT 500GB and that works perfectly.  So I know it's not the controller or capcity issue. Is it the BPVT?  People on the discussion say this drives works fine, I'm just not sure if I'm missing something.  I was fixing this computer for a friend and not 100% when it comes to Macs.
    Has anyone seen this issue before?   Is there anything I can do to get the hard drive to work in the mac..
    Hardware used:
    Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BPVT Hard Disk Drive,320GB, 5400rpm, 8MB Cache, SATA 3 Gb/s
    MacBook 13" circa mid 2007 (model 2.1)

    Hi, unfortunately not, I never found a fix.  I had to swap the disk for a BEVT.
    The BPVT worked in a 2009 MacBook.  It appears to be the older 2007 MacBook can't read a BPVT, I tried a lot and couldn't get it to work.

  • Disc image input/output error

    When burning a disc image using disc utility, I get the ever so popular input/output error message. I cannot find anywhere on these posts a solution to this problem. It is not dirty discs, etc. It happens when I try to copy dvd's... which are not licensed, etc.

    Could be so many things, Input/Output errors are generally loosing contact with a device for a variety of reasons, do you get any error # with that?
    Open Console in Utilities & watch for more info whn you try to burn, or open the Disk Utility Log if there.

  • Input/Output error plus CS5.1 download error (mac)

    Hi. Sorry for the long story.
    Yesterday, my Photoshop CS5.5 crashed and I was unable to open the program. I tried all my Adobe products and it was the same. I attempted to uninstall (for some reason Illustrator refuses to uninstall) and had hoped I could reinstall my Creative Suite 4 I purchased back in 2010. I also have a Photoshop CS5.5 disc- all with the serial numbers that came with them, too.
    Here comes the problem on my end: my old computer cannot read discs anymore. I tried for several hours to get my MacBook to read the discs- nothing. So, I turned to the forums and found a download link for all of the previous versions of Photoshop. I found Photoshop CS5.5, I hit download. Everything goes smoothly until I look at what I've downloaded- it's CS5.1, not CS5.5
    Adobe has mistakenly placed CS5.1 in the CS5.5 Photoshop download and no matter who I talk to through the web tech support they can't seem to understand what I'm trying to say. My serial number works but it's only for CS5.5, obviously. And yes, they've checked, it should still be valid for CS5.5, if I can ever get the download to work for me!
    So concludes my first problem.
    My second problem is with a message I keep getting when attempting to install any other version of Photoshop- the "input/output error" message. I figured, well, since I can't get CS5.5, I'll try my Creative Suite CS4. But after I download the .dmg and attempt to open the file and start the installation, I get this
    I tried Creative Suite 4: Design Standard, Photoshop CS4, and Photoshop CS5- all gave me the same message. Is this an issue with my computer or an issue with the download?
    For reference I have a MacBook Pro OS X 10.6.8 and I'm trying to install either Photoshop CS5.5 or Adobe Creative Suite 4: Design Standard and I have serial numbers for both

    Use another browser for the download, though both your issues potentially point to your harddrive being on the verge of breaking down completely and/or your system requiring an operating system reinstall...
    Mylenium

  • I am in mavericks disk utility recovery mode as my mac book will not boot up & stays only on the grey apple screen. When I verify the disk I get open error5 :input /output error on Syst stuck on 1 minute pouring out over 50 error messages & still counting

    I am in Mavericks disk utility recovery mode as my mac book pro will not boot up & stays on the Apple grey screen . When I verify disk permissions I get
    Open error 5:"input/ output error" on syst with over 50 of this messages & still counting . Disk Utility says 1 minute
    But this has been going on for over 10 mins .
    I can not verify disk or repair disk .
    I have tried to reinstall mavericks operating system but it says my hard drive is locked which is very strange .
    Does anyone know what is going on here ?
    My system looks like it has been totally corrupted . Thanks Andrew

    Could be. The "lock" isn't actually looking for a password.
    WARNING: This will completely erase the ENTIRE hard drive.
    What you would need to do is boot to recovery > disk utility > select the MAIN drive on the left side > partition > change partition layout from CURRENT to 1 PARTITION > ensure on the right side it says Format : Mac OSX Extended (Journaled) then push APPLY.
    Then if it will allow us, close the windows until you see the 4 options popup again and select "Reinstall Mac OS X" select the Mac HD and you should be good to go!

  • Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation it gives me an input/output error and stops. Any tips?

    Hi, I have a hard disk failure so to recover my data I am using disk utility to restore the data on an external drive while booting from a second external hard drive. When I perform the operation and after having selected both my destination and source drives, the operation begins but soon fails due to input/output error. If I try to create an image of the drive it gives me the same error message. Any help would be much appreciated.

    Disk Utility only creates a image of the drive, so it's no help getting exactly what you want, which is your files. If the file structure is messed up or the drive is failing then it's no help.
    If you have a external boot drive and you can't access the internal non-booting drive though the typical Finder and windows to transfer your files via drag and drop methods, then you need to install Data Rescue on the external boot drive and it will do as best as it can to recover your files. (works on non-encrypted/non-Filevaulted drives only)
    .Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
    Are you sure you have hard drive failure, or that OS X isn't merely not booting?
    Because if the drive is working physically, then there is a host of fixes
    ..Step by Step to fix your Mac
    https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro?view=documents#/

  • 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 !!

Maybe you are looking for

  • Item text in service p.o.

    Hi Sap Consultants,                                 I have maintained a Long text in service activity number. How the same will be fetched in the item text level in the service order. Thanks & Regards

  • Photos on iDVD fro TV

    I'd like to know how to put photos on iDVD so I can play them on regular DVD players and view on TV. I've never done this, and am confused by all the options and variables I've been told. I'd just like the simplest of instructions for the first time,

  • Simple Router Config Issues

    Forgive me, I have configured several routers on the inside but never a default gateway. It seems simple enough but I am stuck. I can ping the Gateway from the inside. I can ping the inside from the gateway. I can ping the outside from the gateway, b

  • Lost Project in Final Cut Pro X

    I lost my entire project in FCP X. I edited for a couple of days and was very irritated by not being able to save it (though I checked on the internet and as everybody is talking about it I trusted that FCP X would save automatically). When I restart

  • Windows backup reports when restore is attempted that no drive has been found.

    The backup is duly found, but restore (of Windows 7) cannot proceed, since the setup of the repair disc reports that no (target drive) is found. Is there a solution for this? KR Joe