Question: I’m using a 160GB Hitachi External HDD. When I was creating partitions, I accidentally formatted it from NTFS to RAW.
I tried to format it back to NTFS, but I got an error (“could not format”).I then tried to run chkdsk on it, but chkdsk doesn’t work with RAW.
So then I tried with DiskPart, but the same formatting error occurred (“the request could not be performed because of an i/o device error”).
I don’t care if I lose any data, I just want to get my disk back in a usable state.
Answer: Boot from a Linux LiveCD/USB and try GParted (or perhaps from GParted’s own Debian-based LiveCD/USB).
If that doesn’t work, see if you can take the drive out of the case (obviously don’t do it if it’ll void the warranty) and directly attach it to a desktop so you can run GParted on it.
On Gparted you’ll have to “Create a new Partition Table” and then create any partition you’d like because it’s going to format for it.
If you still get I/O errors or GParted fails, use WinDFT and run an Extended/Thorough Test on the drive. If that passes, Erase the Disk and attempt to repartition:
