I/O Error When Transferring Files
August 1, 2008 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
I’ve been trying to transfer a large number of files between a portable Western Digital 250GB hard drive and a secondary drive on another computer via a network. I’m running XP Pro on my laptop.
Smaller files are usually okay, but when I try and transfer some larger ones over 2GB up to 5GB I’ll get the following just about every time.
The text of the error message is:
Cannot copy [FILENAME]: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
I’ve finally gotten the files moved where I need them to be, but the repeated error continues to bother me. I’m hoping my hard drive isn’t failing and going to leave me up a creek later when I’m relying on it for a backup.
A quick search of the error message produced this website with the results which were similar to mine. From the results it sounds like I need to move everything off of it, run CHKDSK /F and CHKDSK /R on it and let it all repair itself.
You can see the results of chkdsk in the event viewer. You might also want to check the hard drive connections. And make sure the drives aren’t overheating.
You have to reformat your external hard disk to NTFS so that it can handle large files. if its Fat 32 then it cant move big files 2.5 gb up.
This may be a stupid question, but can I reformat a USB portable harddrive to NTFS? I think I’ve tried to do that before and it wouldn’t let me.