01-10-2007, 08:30 PM

I just bought a 120GB Maxtor ATA133 7200RPM harddrive and put it into a 3.5" External box to use as an external harddrive. The drive is currently formatted as NTSC. When I try to connect it to my Macbook nothing happens. I open disc utility and the drive is not in there.
I know I should have it formatted as RAW but I can't do this without having access on my Macbook.

I tried it on a friends PC and the drive loaded up but I didn't think to format it differently at the time.

Anyone know what I can do to view this drive on my Macbook?

Thanks for any help.

01-11-2007, 12:00 AM

Format it as FAT32 on a Window machine, then re-format with what you want on the Mac. Oh, and its NTFS, not NTSC....I got them confused on this forum last week myself

It is probably not much surprise, but the formatting SW in OSX is awesome....use Disk Utilities found in the Utilities folder.

01-11-2007, 12:31 AM

Thanks I will try that out soon as I have access to a windows pc.

01-11-2007, 12:36 AM

i don't buy the formatting issue being your problem...

does it have an external power adapter? if so, are you using it when you connect it to the mac? a 3.5" that's that large will probably need it and not run properly just off of usb power.

even if it was formatted ntfs, you should be able to see and copy files off of that drive no problem at all (i've done it off of a couple). ntfs will only keep you from creating new files, or deleting/modifying the existing ones.

you can try the reformat. it can't hurt, but i would try other things first (power, cables)

01-11-2007, 02:57 PM

ok i tried the harddrive on a PC and it isn't recognized there either.

I am now thinking that I may have not safeley removed the harddrive and it could have been damaged or maybe it was too close to the magnet on the macbook?....Is there anyway to recover a harddrive from either of these problems? can i just install the harddrive itself as a slave in a PC and fix it from there?

01-11-2007, 04:58 PM

Try this on your Mac. Go to Terminal. In Terminal, type:

ls /dev/rdisk?

Now plug the drive back in and repeat the ls command.

If there are more entries there than there were before then the Mac is at least seeing the physical drive. If you have gotten that far successfully, see this thread (just new today) where I describe a Terminal command set for recovering such drives:

Formatting External Drive for FAT32

If, instead, the drive is plugged in and you can hear it running, there is an off chance that the partition table may be damaged. You can fix this with commercial utilities like PartitionMagic. If you are lucky enough to have access to a running copy of SuSE Linux, you can also fire up YaST, and use it's partitioner to do the job.

What you would do is select the drive (usually /dev/sda or /dev/sdb), and delete the partition table. This is under Advanced, usually at the lower right of the Partitioner window. Now select Disks, Commit, and it will do the job. It actually deletes the old one and creates a new one. Now select the /dev/sda entry again, right click and select Create. This will create a new logical partition in the partition table. Fill out the formatting options for FAT32 and let 'er rip. Once done, you should be able to access the drive from within SuSE. If that is OK, you are good to go. Unmount the drive and try it again on your Mac. It should work this time.

BTW, as you can see from the above thread, I went through a similar experience this AM. It is not in the thread above, but among the other problems that drive had was a damaged partition table. The SuSE solution I mentioned above resolved that and the drive is good as new.

Good luck!

01-11-2007, 09:54 PM

Well, after trying your suggestions the drive is still not recognized. I physically removed connected it internally to a PC as a slave drive and the computer would not even boot up. I tried a program called BOOTitNG also and it did not recognize the drive either.

Its hard for me to see this harddrive as being broken since I seen it working fine and then as soon as I plugged it into my Macbook it decided to stop working.

01-31-2007, 03:02 AM

Ok so you are having harddrive issues...in your mac u have to enable the root (administrator) and then log out and log in as root...and unplug ur HDD and then plug it in..u should be able to see it there...and edit the premissions to read and write for all all boxes.

this should work for you if coz i have had the same problem but make sure u dont use root for everyday use coz it is only need to be used in most cases

:bone:

01-31-2007, 03:03 AM

one more thing...if u wanna know how to enable root....try looking up apple.com site for that ...they have it there

11-30-2009, 10:48 AM

Can anyone help?

I have an external harddrive formated on a new Macbook however my minimac cannot read this drive. How do I re-format the external drive and which format????

Thanks
Andy