External USB Hard Drive Woes

Mossy Monk

have an external usb hdd and while i can see it on the safely remove hardware icon i cannot see it in my computer so cant access the files on it. tried it on other usb ports and no joy. the pc was reinstalled today. any ideas?

Karoma

Right-click on My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management -- is it visible in there?
OS? Filesystem(s)?

Mossy Monk

it shows in there

says
Disk 1
Basic
233.76 GB .. 233.76GB
Online .. Unallocated


Windows XP Pro

Inspector Gadget

Mossy Monk wrote:

it shows in there

says
Disk 1
Basic
233.76 GB .. 233.76GB
Online .. Unallocated


Windows XP Pro

There's your problem - "Unallocated" == No partition, no filesystem. Need both to put files on the disk

Right click in the unallocated bit, create a partition, and format it - FAT32 if you want maximum read/write potential (especially with non 2k/XP machines), or NTFS if you want to get the most out of the disk, interoperability be damned.

Then you should be sorted

Gadget

Karoma

Um, was the important stuff on it previously?

Mossy Monk

yes about 200 gigs worth

thanks lads, it is appreciated

the_viper2kie

I have a similar problem i think, I have a mxtor one touch II that i have formatted using my mac. When i got to connect it to my Windows PC i get the same problem, shows up as a disc connected but not seen in my computer. I know i need to format it in FAT32 which similar to my memory key will work in both computers-even though it will deposit all that trashes stuff on it. Will the method above fix the problem, any way of keeping the data thats already on the drive?

Cheers,

Hugh

8T8

Mossy Monk wrote:

yes about 200 gigs worth

thanks lads, it is appreciated

Try this program and see if anything can be recovered, worth a shot you got nothing to lose.

Heinrich

the_viper2kie wrote:

I have a similar problem i think, I have a mxtor one touch II that i have formatted using my mac. When i got to connect it to my Windows PC i get the same problem, shows up as a disc connected but not seen in my computer. I know i need to format it in FAT32 which similar to my memory key will work in both computers-even though it will deposit all that trashes stuff on it. Will the method above fix the problem, any way of keeping the data thats already on the drive?

Cheers,

Hugh

Plug it into your mac and copy the stuff to the HDD. Then when you are sure your stuff is saved format the disk as PC compatible. Recopy and try it on the PC

the_viper2kie

Heinrich wrote:

Plug it into your mac and copy the stuff to the HDD. Then when you are sure your stuff is saved format the disk as PC compatible. Recopy and try it on the PC

Thanks for that guys, Will try at weekend when i have access to both computers. Problem is though that i dont have space on my mac HDD so guess i'll just have to lose all the data.
Is there or are there any plans to introduce a cross platform format that wont leave all the junk?! I take it other people get left with a .trashes folder and a copy of every file with a "." in front of it, when they connect any usb storage device to both computers?!

HK

gamer

burn the files to cdr or dvdr,or use a usb pen drive,to transfer em to pc,marxpcs fairview have ,usb 1gig drive 52e ,with usb2 cable free.

Jean Luc

use partition magic or whatever the mac equivalant is..you have 30 gigs free so you should be able to partition the 30gigs to fat32..copy over some stuff..creat another partition from the free space again and copy over again and so on..pain in the ass but you get to keep all your stuff