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3 August 2021  Ashley S. Miller  Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
 

Summary
Generally, if your mobile hard drive shows not initialized, it is probably caused by MBR corruption or physical damage. At that time, you should initialize the device. However, if you fail to initialize the drive, you will see the I/O device error. In this essay, we will talk about how to fix the I/O device error.



CONTENTS

table iconPart 1: Reasons of Hard Drive Initialization Failure
table iconPart 2: What is I/O Error? How to Recover Data Corrupted by I/O Error?
table iconPart 3: How to Fix I/O Device Error?
how to fix the i/o device error

Part 1: Reasons of Hard Drive Initialization Failure

These are the possible reasons of the hard drive initialization failure.
● The hard drive is attacked by virus and malware.
● There are some bad tracks in the hard drive.
● Some partitions of the hard drive are corrupted.
● The hard drive is physically damaged, or the file system is corrupted.
● MBR is corrupted.
When you meet with these problems, you can try to initialize the hard drive in Disk Management. Here are the steps.
Step 1: Connect the external hard drive to the computer. Then, press the keys [Win + X] and select [Disk Management] in the following menu.
open windows disk management
Step 2: Right click at the target disk and select [Initialize Disk].
how to initialize disk on windows
Step 3: Select the partition style, MBR or GPT. If the hard drive is over 2 TB, please select GPT. Otherwise, select MBR. Click here to learn more about MBR and GPT.
select gpt or mbr as the partition style
Step 4: Next, right click at the drive and select [New Simple Volume].
add new simple volume to initialize disk in disk management
Step 5: In the following, select the volume size and click on [Next] to go on.
set the volume size in new simple volume wizard
Step 6: Select a drive letter.
assign a drive letter for the new volume
Step 7: After that, select [NTFS] in [File system], [Default] in [Allocation unit size] and name for the volume label. Finally, check the option [Perform a quick format] and click on [Next] – [Finish] ending up the process.
select file system
These are the steps about how to initialize the hard drive. If you fail to initialize the hard drive and meet with the I/O device error, you can read the following part.

Part 2: What is I/O Error? How to Recover Data Corrupted by I/O Error?

1. What is I/O Error?

An I/O device error appears when Windows is not able to perform an input/output action (such as reading or copying data) when it is trying to access a drive or disk.
how to fix the i/o device error
It is noted that the I/O device error may cause data loss. Therefore, we suggest that you use the professional data recovery software Renee Undeleter to recover the data.

2. How to Recover Hard Drive with Renee Undeleter?

Renee Undeleter is the data recovery software. When the users accidentally delete the important files, empty Recycle Bin, or format the disk/drive, the software can retrieve the deleted data. It contains 4 options, namely fast partition scan, whole partition scan, whole disk scan and image creation. These functions can help the users easily recover the lost data.
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It is easy to recover the data with Renee Undeleter. Here are the steps.
Step 1: Download and install Renee Undeleter. Open the software and then get into [Whole Disk Scan].
Note: Don’t install the software into the source disk in case that the data is overwritten, unable to be recovered.
select whole disk scan in renee undeleter
Functions of different recovery modes:

Fast partition scan: Recover the files after emptying Recycle Bin or deleted by mistake without data backup.

Whole partition scan: Scan the whole partition and list all files, especially for the formatted partition or inaccessible issue.

Whole disk scan: Scan entire disk to find out all partitions’ information and simulate the partition table.

Image creation: Create a partition image which can be used in case that reading partition is slow or need a backup.

Step 2: Next, select the disk to scan and click on [Next] to go on.
select a disk to recover in renee undeleter
Step 3: After that, select the partition you want to scan. If you don’t select a partition, all partitions will be scanned.
scanning the whole disk in renee undeleter
Wait for the scan and then select the file to be recovered. Then, click on [Recover] to recover the lost files.
select taget files to recover with renee undeleter
Step 4: Select a destination folder to save the recovered files and finally click on [Recover] to save the files.
recover files from whole disk scan with renee undeleter
These are the steps about how to recover data with Renee Undeleter. After that, we can fix the I/O device error as follows.

Part 3: How to Fix I/O Device Error?

1. Run DiskPart

Steps:
Step 1: Connect the external disk to the computer. Then, press the keys [Win + R] and type [cmd]. Next, press the Enter key to open Command Prompt.
press win and r to run cmd
Step 2: Enter the following commands and press the Enter key after typing each command.
diskpart
list disk: All disks in the computer are listed and you can confirm the letter of the external disk according to the disk space.
type and list disks in command prompt
select disk 1 : 1 means the letter of the external hard disk.
type select disk in diskpart to initialize the disk
clean: It can delete all volumes and partition of the disk, but the data can be recovered if not overwritten.
type clean disk in diskpart to initialize disk
After that, you can write the following commands to create new partition:
create partition primary size=n

“n” means the capacity of each partition. It can be set as the maximum size of the external disk. Then, you can type “assign letter = H” to assign a letter of the partition.

format fs=fat32 label=”FAT32”

“fs=fat32″ means the file system is FAT32. Of course, you can format the disk to be exFAT or NTFS, namely “fs=exFAT” or “fs=NTFS”. Click here to learn about the file system types. “label” means the label of the partition, such as “system”, “local disk” and “FAT32” in this case.

exit You can write this command to exit the program.
create partition primary size

2. Rebuild MBR

MBR means master boot record. It records all the partitions of a disk and all the critical data of the unit components. Therefore, when you meet with the I/O device error, you can consider if there is something wrong with MBR. You can follow these steps to rebuild MBR.
Step 1: Connect the external hard disk to the computer. Press the keys [Win + R] and then type [cmd]. Press the Enter key to open Command Prompt.
press win and r to run cmd
Step 2: Next, write the following commands and press the Enter key after writing each command. Finally, check if the I/O device error is removed.
bootrec/FixMbr
bootrec/FixBoot
bootrec/rebuildBcd
rebuild mbr to fix i/o device error