[KeyStroke]

I have an external Western Digital 3.5" HDD (HDD+Enclosure). It ran fine for a few month untill I started getting this error recently when I try to move some specific file out of it:

Cannot copy <filename>: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error

(where <filename> is the file name i'm trying to copy)

I tried defragmenting the HDD, re-fromatting it and chkdsk, yet I still get this error.

What could be wrong?

[bonk]

Howdy,

Try this: Device Manager

To get to Device Manager click Start>>Run type devmgmt.msc click OK

Click the plus (+) sign next to Disk Drives.

Double-click the drive you having problem with.

Click the Policies button and then click Optimize for performance.

[KeyStroke]

Hello Bonk,

Thanks for your reply, but all my drives are already set to "Optimize for performance"

any other ideas?

[bonk]

What format is the drive in...Fat32 or NTFS?

[KeyStroke]

It's NTFS, and the drive isn't SATA by the way.

[KeyStroke]

I've used Western Digital's diagnostic tool, then the result showed "too many bad sectors". I'm not that good in hardware, can this be fixed through software?

[KeyStroke]

Well, after I formatted it, it passed the test. What the hell..?

[gapstone]

I have the same problem, however my question is that if I would to format my external harddrive will I lose everything because I do have a lot of information on my WD 500gb external hard drive and I don't want to loose all of my saved data!