Trying to format a Toshiba SATA 2.5" HDD. It's hooked up to my desktop via a USB SATA HDD adapter. Using standard WIn7 Sart->Computer->Manage->Disk Management

It recognizes the drive but says it is not initialized. When I choose "initialize disk" and then either MBR or GPT, it tries then gives me "request could not be performed because of an I/O device error".

Googled iy but found no solution. So maybe someone on this forum have had luck formatting a disk after en error like this. How did you do it? If I need to use some third-party software that's fine but I would prefer a free tool.

Thx