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.

I’m trying to get things back online and organized on my laptop for working with clients. One of the things I used to do is have many of the frequently used files for clients set to be available offline when I’m disconnected from our network.

The problem was that I quickly ran out of available free space on my hard drive to maintain all the files I may need along with those programs and options that are run locally from the machine all the time.

Here’s my question, can I easily redirect and RELY on moving my default offline files location to my portable, Western Digital 250GB USB drive?

Obviously this is my work machine and it needs to be reliable and no major unexpected issues arise when I’m not expecting them.