Why: The Request Could Not Be Performed Because of an I/O Device Error – Restoring Backup Disk Windows

If you are trying to present a backup disk in Windows Disk Management (virtual disk manager), you may receive an error when you attempt to bring the disk online. You may also notice an invalid message next to the disk in disk management. Further, disk management constantly freezes as you attempt to bring the disk online. If you are successful bringing the disk online, you are unable to do anything else with the disk and you will receive the I/O device error message.

The most likely reason you are receiving this error message is because the drive you are attempting to restore is part of a striped RAID set. Unfortunately, you cannot present the same striped RAID set on the same system unless the drive will be replacing the old striped set. This is because Windows does not know how to handle the same mount points for the same striped sets.

If you wish to mount the disks without replacing the main mount disks, you will have to do so on a different Windows system.

1. Connect both disks (the striped RAID pair) to the Windows machine. It is important you are using the correct striped / RAID pair or the steps below will not work.

2. Open Windows disk management. Select each disk and choose online.

3. Finally, right-click each disk and select Import Foreign Disks.

Once you have completed step 3 for both disks, the disks will automatically merge into a RAID set (creating a single logical volume) and your disk should show online is disk management.