Input/output error while using google colab with google drive

Question

When I use google colab I get this error more than once and randomly Sometimes it works and sometimes not

OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error

Answer 1

I ran into this error while using os.listdir on a google drive folder that had over 5.5k files in it, and a little window in the bottom left corner of my colab notebook popped up saying a timeout had occurred.

Because I have Colab Pro, I tried switching my runtime Hardware Accelerator to a GPU and Runtime Shape to High-Ram. This fixed the problem for me. It might have been one or both of those options together, not sure.

The problem with the top answer is that you might need some simple functionality in Colab (like os.listdir) in order to efficiently move files and create sub-folders to achieve reduced folder contents. If you can't even list what's in a folder without a timeout error occurring, you may just need to upgrade to Colab Pro to gain those advanced runtime options for a more powerful computing environment.