External Hard Drive issues.

Hi everyone,

I got some problems with an external Drive I own, when I plug it in my MacBook, the only thing that happen is a message appearing on my screen, telling that "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." and it gives me three possible options, "initialize..." "ignore" or "eject" I know, that this Hard Drive is perfectly readable on other laptops with Ubuntu, or Windows, but it can't be read here, if I press "ignore" nothing will happen and if I press "initialize" it will open the disk utility window, and there is not much I can do there to fix this problem but to format the Hard Drive, which I don't want because there are some very important files on it, how can I read this Hard Drive? can anyone help me please?

Thanks for your time.

ILTRIVELLA said:

...and if I press "initialize" it will open the disk utility window, and there is not much I can do there to fix this problem but to format the Hard Drive, which I don't want because there are some very important files on it, how can I read this Hard Drive? can anyone help me please?

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WOW…two folks from Switzerland in the same day!!! Welcome!

Your hard drive has been formatted in a way that Macintosh computers & the Mac OS cannot read. Mac's use a different format than Windows. Usually Mac's can read Windows formatted hard drives…so I'm not exactly sure what format this hard drive is in.

I'm assuming that the important files on this external hard drive are from a computer other than your Macintosh computer. Why not try to read these files from that computer & not the Mac?

If you did want to use this hard drive with you Mac. Then I would suggest copying the important files from this hard drive to another storage device…then formatting it so it can be read by a Mac.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

WOW…two folks from Switzerland in the same day!!! Welcome!

Your hard drive has been formatted in a way that Macintosh computers & the Mac OS cannot read. Mac's use a different format than Windows. Usually Mac's can read Windows formatted hard drives…so I'm not exactly sure what format this hard drive is in.

I'm assuming that the important files on this external hard drive are from a computer other than your Macintosh computer. Why not try to read these files from that computer & not the Mac?

If you did want to use this hard drive with you Mac. Then I would suggest copying the important files from this hard drive to another storage device…then formatting it so it can be read by a Mac.

- Nick

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Hey Nick, first of all thanks for the warm welcome I know that my hard drive is formatted in a way that it can't be read by my Mac, I got that, because my other external hard drive is formatted in journal, I'm not sure either though which format this hard drive is formatted in, I have no other computer which I can use to make this operation, this hard drive it was the one I was using in the past with my old computer, which I don't have anymore, and even if I still had it, I could not do it, because as i told you my other hard drive is formatted in journal and can be read only by my Mac, I really need the files inside of that hard drive...

There is anyone there still willing to help me?

With the drive attached launch Disk Utility if it does not launch automatically. Select the drive in the list on the left then click the "Erase" tab. This will not erase the drive.

Without clicking on anything else in Disk Utility look at the bottom of the screen. It should tell you what format the drive is in. It should say something like MacOS extended journaled, NTFS, ExFat, etc. Let us know what it says.

Slydude said:

With the drive attached launch Disk Utility if it does not launch automatically. Select the drive in the list on the left then click the "Erase" tab. This will not erase the drive.

Without clicking on anything else in Disk Utility look at the bottom of the screen. It should tell you what format the drive is in. It should say something like MacOS extended journaled, NTFS, ExFat, etc. Let us know what it says.

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Master Boot Record shows Windows Format and the MS DOS recommendation in Disk Utility may signify FAT32. Read this:-

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3764

If it is NTFS have a look at this thread:-


How to manually enable NTFS read and write in OS X - CNET


Sorry tht does tell you th actual format - that is something you will have to find out your self hooking up to a Windows machine maybe.

harryb2448 said:

Master Boot Record shows Windows Format and the MS DOS recommendation in Disk Utility may signify FAT32. Read this:-

Mac OS X v10.6: Using MS-DOS (FAT32)-formatted disks for home directories - Apple Support

If it is NTFS have a look at this thread:-


How to manually enable NTFS read and write in OS X - CNET


Sorry tht does tell you th actual format - that is something you will have to find out your self hooking up to a Windows machine maybe.

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Sorry but I am kinda a noob in all this stuff, and even if I tried many time to read this articles you sent me, I can't understand them...