Accidentally added PC volume to ext HDD!!!

Hi,

New member here hoping that someone can help me save my data!

What happened is:

I plugged my mac formatted external hard drive into a windows 7 pc to transfer some files. It connected but didn't show up. My friend said that it was because no drive letter was assigned and all I had to do was add one in disk management.

So I created a new volume on the drive for the max size, i.e. total capacity, and named it E, and clicked no to 'format this drive'. Because I wasn't erasing anything I didn't see any issue. Anyhow, despite now having a drive letter windows wouldn't let me use the drive without formatting so I gave up and decided to transfer everything on some DVD-R's.

When I plugged the external drive back into my Mac to my horror I was greeted by - 'Disk not readable.... initilize, ignore, eject'.

I removed the volume in windows but it's still no good.



Anyone here know what to do? At no point have I formated or erased anything, it's just this stupid volume stopping my mac from recognizing the disc.

I really really don't want to have to wipe this disc as I've got so much data on it I'm sure there must be a simple fix!

I've moved your post to a more proper forum; please be sure to check the forum descriptions in the future to find the best place to post.

By posting in the right forum you help people not only find your question faster, but it helps others looking for the same information in the future.

Thanks for understanding!

When you used disk management on the drive, you basically blew away the partition table that allows Mac to recognize this drive..but you didn't format it Windows couldn't really see it either.

You're now stuck in a place where the data is most likely present on the drive by the WAY to sanely get access to it is lost..

Please grab a demo of Download Data Rescue for Mac - Recover lost data on drives. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads and see if it can help you get your data back.

And for next time..Windows (natively) can see and recognize drives that are FAT32 or NTFS formatted..Mac OS X can see FAT32 and HFS partitioned drives. If you're going to use a single drive to share between Windows and Mac, and you've probably figured this out, use FAT32 as the filesystem on the drive..

Regards

My apologies,

I assumed it was the correct forum as the issue was with the volume/format/set-up within OS rather than the actually physical component i.e. HDD.

Hopefully I get an answer in this forum.