External USB HDD issue

Hello,

I wanted to use timemachine with my Mac (connected via USB) but it wouldn't show in Finder or the desktop when I plugged it in. I rang Apple Care and they said I need to format it as I've used it with Windows in the past. So, I decided to backup my data on to my windows desktop machine.

After copying most of the important data explorer crashed. However, when recopying the data after the crash (to ensure against data loss) my RAID controller program told me the RAID was degraded. I thought "hey, I'll rebuild the RAID. Worst thing that would happen is I lose the data I've already copied and Ill just copy it again." Wrong. For some reason the Intel RAID program decided my eSata/USB2 Caddie (IcyBox) should be part of the RAID too and that's why its degraded. As soon as I pressed repair the external hard drive disappeared. I couldn't cancel the repair so I shut down my computer and then turned off the external harddrive.

Now if I start my PC (Windows) and attempt to use the external HDD the RAID controller will try and rebuild it with the external HDD. I've tried using a third computer to copy my data to but it doesn't see the HDD (using USB instead of eSATA this time). It says there is a USB storage device but the status in disk management shows "Unreadable".

I cannot simply reformat the drive because the Mac doesn't see it in the Disk utility (Mac) and disk management (Windows) only lets me see the properties. There is no format or usual hard drive options.

Any idea what I can do? My priority is to recover the movies/music from the hard drive but if I have to I'll just reformat it. I've tried a data recovery program but it just shows the one physical drive (OS drive) and no external drives.

if both windows and the mac cannot see that drive (and you have tried by the looks of it) then one free option maybe to try a third way.

You can download CD run versions of Ubuntu linux and use them on the PC or Mac

If you get ubuntu up and running off a CD, see if that can see your drive and let you reformat it

You have seemed to have tries all else

I've tried using a Ubuntu Live CD 7.10 but that only sees the filesystem, cd drive and Mac OS.

I'm thinking this may be a caddie issue but it's worked fine in the past. This is the first time I've used the USB cable instead of the eSATA one though. I doubt it'll be that.

Ok, I've managed to remove it from the RAID (It looks like one of the two drives in my original RAID has failed as there is a missing port). I'm using a data recovery program to get as much as possible back from the external hard drive.

Once this is done I'm back to the beginning. The external hard drive wasn't showing in Disk utility. I understand you can read, but not write to, NTFS drives. The thing is, it won't even display the drive anywhere so I cannot read it.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Kemok,

If the drive is formatted in NTFS, you may have to find a utility to convert it to Fat 32. Use the manufacturer's disk that came with the drive or if it was OEM go to their web site and download their utility on the PC. Use that CD or utility to convert from NTFS to FAT32. Then Mac should be able to read it.

Also if you have Partition Magic, it will do the conversion!

Good luck, Noel

Noels said:

Kemok,

If the drive is formatted in NTFS, you may have to find a utility to convert it to Fat 32. Use the manufacturer's disk that came with the drive or if it was OEM go to their web site and download their utility on the PC. Use that CD or utility to convert from NTFS to FAT32. Then Mac should be able to read it.

Also if you have Partition Magic, it will do the conversion!

Good luck, Noel

Click to expand...

I should be able to reformat the disk in to FAT32 with OS X Disk Utility but there's no sign of the disk there, in the finder or on the desktop.