On Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:02:50 -0700 (PDT), RJ wrote:
> On Aug 26, 8:59*am, RJ <rjbrun...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 12:15*am, "Gene E. Bloch" <not...@other.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:20:19 -0700 (PDT), RJ wrote:
>>> > Is it possible to recover the files from an external hard drive after
>>> > plugging it into a mac? *Window Vista sees the drive and assigns it a
>>> > drive letter, but I can't access any of the files and it keeps telling
>>> > me to format the drive. *I have files on it that I don't want to lose.
>>
>>> > Thanks,
>>> > RJ
>>
>>> I have plugged drives into a Mac and then a PC without a problem, so
>>> something else might be happening here.
>>
>>> I have plugged both FAT32 drives and NTFS drives into the Mac, which was an
>>> Intel Mac. I have written to the FAT32 drives natively on the Mac, and to
>>> the NTFS drives using some free software, as well as both Parallels and
>>> VMware virtual machines.
>>
>>> Never a problem.
>>
>>> Did you try to format or otherwise manipulate the drive (other than just
>>> writing to a FAT32 systemn)?
>>
>>> Try plugging the drive into another PC, just in case something is screwy on
>>> yours.
>>
>>> --
>>> Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
>>
>> Thanks for your reply. *I have tried plugging the drive into a couple
>> different windows machines and they appear to recognize the drive, but
>> not the file system. *I am asked if I want to format the drive. I am
>> going to try connecting the drive to a mac today. *I can browse the
>> files with some recovery software and I did find some software to
>> recover the data, however, it only recovers the files and doesn't
>> maintain the folder structure. When I look at the drive properties
>> under disk management it says the disk is in a RAW state rather than
>> NTFS or FAT32. *I would like to recover the files before I reformat
>> the drive. Do you know of any good inexpensive or free file recovery
>> software?
>
> More information: I plugged the hard drive into a mac and I am able
> to access the files. I talked to a co-worker of mine who has the same
> issue with a thumb drive.
I defer to the others about recovery software, since I haven't used any
in over 5 years.
Please do *not* do anything that writes to your hard drive until after
you have recovered your files. There is always a risk that something
further will go wrong, especially if you end up trying to recover
deleted files or files that seem to be deleted - the recovery software
must be installed on and run from a different drive, and the recovered
data must be written to a different drive. By "different drive" I mean
something other than the problem drive.
It may be possible, on a Mac, to copy the entire drive to a new drive
that you can read in Windows (i.e., FAT32).
There is also software available online that lets a Windows computer
read a Mac drive. Look here (or Google):
http://ogasawalrus.com/blog/node/208
The link is for HFS Explorer, which I have used; it's free. There are
others, not all free.
I wish you luck - it seems like a real bug in the Mac system, and not
easy to fix.
--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
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