Input / output error when Erasing a disk

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Hi,

I am trying to format a new hard drive. It is an 80 GB USB Samsung drive.

I open up Disk Utilitiy, click on Erase, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for the volume format, and press [Erase]. After a couple minutes I get the following message:

Disk Erase failed with the error
Input/output error


A similar thing happens when I try to Partition, except the message is Partition failed.

This is a new iMac with OS 10.5.6, 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB.

I haven't used Macs that much, so it's quite possible I'm going about this wrong... How do you format a new USB hard disk?
 

chscag

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Try this:

1. Run Disk Utility. Highlight the line that shows the Samsung disk capacity.

2. Click on erase.

3. Now select format HFS Extended

4. Name the drive if you so desire.

5. Click on erase at the bottom of the screen, then click erase again on the second window.

You can partition the drive after the format and erase is completed.

Regards.
 
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Thanks,

Yes, that was what I was doing. I did get it working. The USB cable has an extra connector on one end for extra power. Plugging that into a second USB port caused the computer to pop up the error "disk cannot be read by this computer", and then after that the Erase/Partition worked.

The drive does work with only one connector plugged in, just I guess for the initial formatting it needed a little extra power. It also seems to depend on the enclosure, since I had tried a different enclosure and the same brand disk was recognized fine with only the one connection.
 

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