External HD not working after switching to a Mac

[gosha83]

My Toshiba Satellite kicked the bucket the other day. Fortunately (so I thought) I had everything backed up to a Seagate external HD (140GB). So I bought a MacBook and plugged the HD in. Everything seemed fine for a couple of days. I saw all my files and was able to access them.

Then the other day I turned the MacBook on and it tells me that the drive failed to initialize and the computer couldn't read it. I plugged it into my work computer (Lenovo ThinkPad) and it said that the drive wasn't formatted and would I like to format it...

My question is: am I fucked? Or can I at least recover the files before formatting the HD to a Mac standard?

[Moon Man]

Get a Mac.

Moon

[gosha83]

Get a Mac.

Moon

Thanks, I will.

[Blues Fan in TX]

Get a Mac.

Moon

++

Problem solved!

[gosha83]

++

Problem solved!

I know getting a Mac will solve every fuckin problem. That was the ONLY reason I bought one before posting this question...I also drank heavily after it...and ate at Peter Luger's to make sure I'm legit...but can someone answer the fuckin' question? I need my pr0n!

[Blues Fan in TX]

If you format the drive you will probably lose what's on it (unless you go to one of those professionals that specialize in recovering data from corrupted/damaged/invalid drives - which you might have to do anyway...)

Eject the drive from the Mac, shut down the Mac, plug in the drive, and restart to see if it recognizes it after that...if not, chances are the drive is toast...

Incidentally, the Mac can read files from a Windows drive just fine, but it does not write them in a format Windows can understand...so if you used that drive in your Mac for a few days, that's probably why the Windows laptop says the drive appears to be unformatted...

[Mark]

Incidentally, the Mac can read files from a Windows drive just fine, but it does not write them in a format Windows can understand...so if you used that drive in your Mac for a few days, that's probably why the Windows laptop says the drive appears to be unformatted...

Not entirely true. It all depends on how the drive is formatted.

If you're going to be going back and forth between operating systems, the drive needs to be formatted as a FAT drive for DOS. As long as that drive is formatted correctly as FAT, the person should be able to go back and forth without issue. If the drive is going to stay in OS X then it's fine to go ahead and format the drive as a standard journaled OS X drive.

[Mark]

My Toshiba Satellite kicked the bucket the other day. Fortunately (so I thought) I had everything backed up to a Seagate external HD (140GB). So I bought a MacBook and plugged the HD in. Everything seemed fine for a couple of days. I saw all my files and was able to access them.

Then the other day I turned the MacBook on and it tells me that the drive failed to initialize and the computer couldn't read it. I plugged it into my work computer (Lenovo ThinkPad) and it said that the drive wasn't formatted and would I like to format it...

My question is: am I fucked? Or can I at least recover the files before formatting the HD to a Mac standard?

I'd try switching between USB and Firewire...if it has a Firewire interface at all.

Or...

Get yourself set up with Parallels/VMWare/Boot Camp and see if Windows won't properly read that drive and get that stuff backed up elsewhere.

Or...

Install this

Or...

Check Seagate's site for any drivers for OS X.

Or...

Accept the fact that your drive might just be hosed.

Or...

Buy another Mac.