LaCie Rugged Hard Drive not being recognized!

Hello there,

This is a big issue for me and its driving me crazy!

I just bought a LaCie Rugged HDD (with Firewire & USB) so that I can transfer files between my Windows desktop & PowerBook. I plugged it in first in to my PC, it connected fine & I copied a few files in to it. Then I connected it to the PowerBook, which said the drive format is not supported. So I changed it to Mac OS X Journaled using Disk Utility. And then I found out that that particular format won't work on Windows (I'm fairly new to the world of Mac), so I reformatted it to MS-DOS.

Still, when I plugged it into Windows, the drive never came up, although it showed up in disk manager software. I tried formatting it on Windows but the only available option was NTFS, which Mac doesn't support. This was all using Leopard 10.5.6 by the way.

I then formatted the hard drive again to MS-DOS, this time on Tiger 10.4.11. The drive was then recognized by Windows. But it doesn't allow me to copy any files, saying disk is full, even though its completely empty!

Can somebody advise me on what to do? I'm fed up with all the formatting & reformatting, its driving me nuts! At the moment I have a trial version of MacDrive 7 on my Windows PC so it helps me transfer files. The full version is expensive, & I want a drive which doesn't rely on other softwares to mount.

Any help will be very much appreciated. Thanks!!

It sounds like the partition map on the drive has become corrupted. Formatting it as FAT-32 (MS DOS) should have allowed it to be useable when plugged into your PC or Mac.

I wouldn't mess with it any more. Since it's new, return it where you purchased it from and ask to have it exchanged for a new one. When you get the new drive, leave it as NTFS and purchase a copy of "Paragon NTFS" which will allow you to read and write to the drive from your Mac.

Paragon NTFS Link

It's $39.95 US. (You'll have to convert that into your currency.)

Regards.

Thanks for the reply 'chscag'. Its all sorted now. I didn't knew that FAT32 puts limitations on file & partition sizes you see, and that's where the problem was!

Thanks again!