external HD question

[Ko-nsx]

I have a WD 500g ext HD, that is hooked up to my gateway PC for basically movie, video and picture storage. I have a macbook that has some music on it i wanted to move to the WD drive. I hooked up the drive to the macbook and tried to move some of the files over and it SEEMED liked nothing happended. I decided to not force it and get some more info.

NOW when i plug it back into the main PC, it sees the drive but won't open it, telling me i need to format the drive!! I definitely don't want to do that! Plugged back to the macbook and everything is there and the macbook opens and plays files. Back to the homePC and again, it says i need to format. What did i do and what should i do to be able to use the drive on the home pc???

Seriously about to blow a gasket if i loose all my pics and music. Can you help?


For clarity, i did open itunes on the mac and tried to move the itunes files from the mac to the itunes file on the WD HD. I didn't get any notification so i figuredit didn't work. then i decided to get some more info and wait. now the drive won'topen anything on the home PC.

 

[Acura NsX Pilot]

I wish I could offer some help but at least you can still access the drive not like mine which went down and could not be recovered by hooking it up to another computer. My only options were to send them my drive and let them try to do a recovery which was not guarenteed or they would replace my drive and give me another one. Both options sucked IMO ... Now I have a back up to my back up and another to back that up. Drives are cheap now lost data is expensive and irreplaceable sometimes.

 

[jond]

The first thing I would do is back up that drive on your mac. Sounds like the Mac corrupted it somewhat. After it's 100% backed up and you're confident of that fact, hook it back up to the PC, format it, buy software like below, and then copy the backed up data back to your drive.

As far as I know, the only way for you to share a large external drive between windows and mac is with 3rd party software. Each OS uses their own file system.

Not sure what the best software is, but this is an example:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

 

[MAJOR STONER]

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

 

[Ko-nsx]

Thanks for the replies guys. I actually updated Vista to with SP1. The drive stated acting funny after that(should have said that in the beginning) NOW i noticed under properties for the drive, it is labeled as RAW instead of NTFS. i downloaded a program called Zar, it got in the drive and i got out 1 foulder, but that took 2.5 hours!!! How can i change the drive back to an ntfs?

I went in and named it (F) and windows saw it, until the next day!! I did read somewhere that i need to adjust some ADMIN settings. It shouldn't be that hard a fix should it? I'd hate to lose my music and such. 266GB worth of pics, videos and music!!

 

[Ko-nsx]

The first thing I would do is back up that drive on your mac. Sounds like the Mac corrupted it somewhat. After it's 100% backed up and you're confident of that fact, hook it back up to the PC, format it, buy software like below, and then copy the backed up data back to your drive.

As far as I know, the only way for you to share a large external drive between windows and mac is with 3rd party software. Each OS uses their own file system.

Not sure what the best software is, but this is an example:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

I got it that software on order. thanks

 

[NSXrebel]

Macs can only read NTFS drives but cannot write to them.
Vista cannot read or write HFS (Mac Format)
Sounds like maybe you formatted your external drive with the Mac to HFS. If you did, you've lost whatever you already had on there.
Your best bet is to format the drive to FAT32 which is fully compatible with both OS's. Of course you have the single file size limit of 4GB.

There are 3rd party apps that will allow both OS's to read and write each other's file format.

Funny thing is XBOX360's can fully read HFS drives plugged in to it. I didn't even realize that until somebody mentioned it somewhere on a forum. My external drives are HFS formatted, and I didn't even think about that when I plugged in to the 360. It just worked.

 

[jond]

Thanks for the replies guys. I actually updated Vista to with SP1. The drive stated acting funny after that(should have said that in the beginning) NOW i noticed under properties for the drive, it is labeled as RAW instead of NTFS. i downloaded a program called Zar, it got in the drive and i got out 1 foulder, but that took 2.5 hours!!! How can i change the drive back to an ntfs?

I went in and named it (F) and windows saw it, until the next day!! I did read somewhere that i need to adjust some ADMIN settings. It shouldn't be that hard a fix should it? I'd hate to lose my music and such. 266GB worth of pics, videos and music!!

If that Zar program can get your data, I would let it run as long as it takes rather than trying to change something to speed it up. If it takes a week, give it a week.
Didn't you say your Mac could see the data? I would just copy everything from the drive to the Mac.
There are computer forensics tools that can restore files from even formatted drives if you lose something critical. If that's the case, let us know and we can point you in the right direction. It doesn't sound like anything is THAT critical though?

To get the drive back to NTFS, you'll have to format it in windows which will nix all your data. You want to back it up first.

 

[Ko-nsx]

If that Zar program can get your data, I would let it run as long as it takes rather than trying to change something to speed it up. If it takes a week, give it a week.
Didn't you say your Mac could see the data? I would just copy everything from the drive to the Mac.
There are computer forensics tools that can restore files from even formatted drives if you lose something critical. If that's the case, let us know and we can point you in the right direction. It doesn't sound like anything is THAT critical though?

To get the drive back to NTFS, you'll have to format it in windows which will nix all your data. You want to back it up first.

Well, i fixed it. I went to western digitals website and downloaded a driver for the drive. it was called WD disk management. I installed it and the drive has been working. It still doesn't show a "file type", in properties but it is opening!!! Thanks for all you guys's help. The Zar program did work and it even lets you get individual files off a bad drive.
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

 

[jond]

Well, i fixed it. I went to western digitals website and downloaded a driver for the drive. it was called WD disk management. I installed it and the drive has been working. It still doesn't show a "file type", in properties but it is opening!!! Thanks for all you guys's help. The Zar program did work and it even lets you get individual files off a bad drive.
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

Good to hear!
Just FYI, what I do with all my stuff, I have 2 drives for everything. Everything is backed up. If a drive goes bad, or I get a virus, or whatever I don't break a sweat. Just an idea.

 

[enkrypt3d]

btw Vista can not read the filesystems from a mac... macs can read NTFS but can not write to it.

So be careful swapping drives between the 2 platforms

 

[NSXrebel]

Like I said, if you need a drive that will work on both windows and mac, format the drive to FAT32

 

[llacap]

Mac and pc reads FAT32.

hook up external hdd to mac
open disk utility in the mac (should be under applications folder)
format the external hdd as mac+pc data which is fat32

now your mac and pc can read the drive.

No need to understand NTFS or MAC hfs

 

[Ko-nsx]

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

i bought this software and the mac reads and writes to the external HD. Im a happy camper:smile: