device error

Infopackets Reader Greeshma N. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an external hard drive that has worked fine for years. Now the hard drive won't show up in My Computer, though it shows up under Devices and Printers - very strange! I have tried ... initializing the disk from Disk Management, but it won't format and I keep getting ' The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error '. I have tried cleaning up the disk by deleting items but it shows 0 bytes free and keeps giving me 'The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error'. What can I do to make this work? " My ... (view more)