Disk Utility failing to Format ext. fire wire disk

[jimskau]

Dear forum!

I have a problem with Disk Utility , when trying to format an external fire wire drive.
I cleaned out the drive and proceeded to erase it with zeros. After this Disk utility will not display the subdirectory or verify, repair, partition, erase the disk. The main disk name is still visible, but I cant access any functions.
Error message says input output error.
DiskWarrior will not help, as the original directory is beyond recovery.
I suppose that I have damaged the original directory, and now I would ask the honourable forum if there is any remedy for my actions?

Yours truly,

Jim Skau

 

[iBookG4user]

Hmm, try opening up terminal and then typing:

diskutil list

Find the identifier of the disk that you want to format and then type:

diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ newdisk *disk1*

Make sure to replace asterisks and disk1 with the identifier of the intended disk.

 

[jimskau]

Will get right on the case

Thank you very much for the swift reply I will get right on the case

 

[iBookG4user]

Thank you very much for the swift reply I will get right on the case

No problem, please post the results when it is finished

 

[jimskau]

input/output error

Looked really good, but unfortunately the same error code popped up:
Partitioning encountered error on disk disk1: Input/output error (5)

 

[iBookG4user]

Looked really good, but unfortunately the same error code popped up:
Partitioning encountered error on disk disk1: Input/output error (5)

If you have another external hard drive case available or a spare computer that you could put it in, I'd see if either of those recognize it. If you have a Mac you can put it in, try booting the with Mac OS X install disk and using the disk utility on there to see if it can format the drive. If a PC, you could format it to FAT32 I believe using a windows install disk (I haven't installed windows in a while though). If another enclosure, first try the Disk Utility that you used originally, if it fails then try the Terminal command again. If all of the above fails, then I'd say that the drive has probably gone bad.

 

[jimskau]

Sounds sensible mate!

Thank you again for your swift replies. It is an "elderly" 60Gb barracuda drive that's inside. Had it on a shelf for years, and just needed a bit of extra space to clean up files. Dont think I will pursue matters further, but will keep the remedy you ordinate for future disk problems.
What nacks me is that the drive was emptying readily onto my other Firewire Disk and all together looking normal until I decided to clean the bugger.
At least I did not loose any data on this.

 

[iBookG4user]

Sounds sensible mate!

Thank you again for your swift replies. It is an "elderly" 60Gb barracuda drive that's inside. Had it on a shelf for years, and just needed a bit of extra space to clean up files. Dont think I will pursue matters further, but will keep the remedy you ordinate for future disk problems.
What nacks me is that the drive was emptying readily onto my other Firewire Disk and all together looking normal until I decided to clean the bugger.
At least I did not loose any data on this.

No problem, glad to help when I can. I had a similar problem with my recently purchased SSD, I tried it on 4 different computers with different OS's until I finally got it to format (On Tiger of all operating systems). But then a few days later it died and once again provided the same input/output error that you're getting.