Can not format or erase hard drive using disk utility

[airtas]

I was having boot issues where I couldn't boot into OSX. Thought the hard drive was bad.
So I installed OSX on a flash drive, booted with that drive and used Diskwarrior to save my files.
I purchased a new hard drive and tried 100 different times to format the drive using disk utility.
It would not work. Would get input/output error and can't allocate memory error.

POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Cannot allocate memory

and

POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed. Input/Output error


For fun I put the old drive back in (which accord to all reports the health was fine) and that wouldn't format either.

Upon research, could be the SATA cable. Won't know until I swap the cable.

If it is the cable how was disk warrior able to communicate with the drive?

If not the cable, any ideas on why I can't format?

 

[grahamperrin]

For other readers: some of what's above is cross-posted at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/23068495

If it is the cable how was disk warrior able to communicate with the drive?

Let's say, it was not properly able. I recently found DiskWarrior (version 4, maybe; not the most recent) reporting hardware problems with an SSD. I don't have the PDF handy but the gist was that it could not write to the device.

No comparable problem after the user replaced an internal cable.

 

[Meister]

I had similar problems with the macos disk utility.

Try downloading third party partition software.

 

[airtas]

Replaced the cable and was able to format the drive. Not sure if the drive was bad or just the cable or both but even with the new cable I couldn't boot but I could reformat. We are good now. Weird situation. Can I use timemachine to back up to a USB and then use that USB to restore on a new hard drive?