Damaged USB HD

A friend has passed me a WD USB HD, formatted NTFS, which he dropped, to see if I can do anything with it. Windows appears to recognise it as a drive but doesn't assign it a drive letter. OSX doesn't want to know at all. Does anyone know of any utility that will run on either system that may access the drive? He has a lot on it he'd rather not lose.

Have you tried reformatting it with Disk Utility?

- Nick

peterbj7 said:

He has a lot on it he'd rather not lose.

Click to expand...

pigoo3 said:

Have you tried reformatting it with Disk Utility?

- Nick

Click to expand...

Nick, that request from the OP wouldn't be met with a reformat..

@OP, since windows is recognizing the drive, what does Disk Management think the drive contains? Does the drive spin up and are there any odd noises?

Raz0rEdge said:

Nick, that request from the OP wouldn't be met with a reformat..

Click to expand...

Ahh...just reread OP's post...missed that detail!

- Nick

It seems to spin up, gets warm normally, and makes no odd noises. But neither Disk Management nor the EASEUS equivalent recognise it, so I'm at a bit of a loss what to do next.

Windows 7 does load drivers for it and says it's "ready", but nothing seems to come of that.

In any case, how can I use Disk Utility if the disk is rejected out of hand by OSX?