I Need Help with an iMac G4 HDD Put in a Windows PC

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there's vital information on a bad hdd from my imac g4 that i need soon.

i took the hdd out (40gb maxtor) and put it in my pc. i know that the pc can't readily read it because it's a different format.

the bios sees the hdd
device manager sees the hdd
my computer does NOT see the hdd

i tried using macdrive 8 and hfsexplorer... neither of them acknowledge the existence of an apple hard drive.

is there any other way (without the use of an apple tower or spending lots of money) to retrieve this information off the hdd?
 
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17 inch 2 GHz C2D imac (5,1) with 3GB DDR2 RAM, X1600 (128MB memory) GPU - OSX 10.6.3
It seems your drive is in the Apple extended journaled format or whatever it's called. And only OS X can read that. So to get the data off it you'll need to rehook ot up to the G4 get the data from it. Then if you want to use it on the PC, to a quick wipe of the hard drive and reformat it to NTFS or FAT and then the PC will like it.
 
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It seems your drive is in the Apple extended journaled format or whatever it's called. And only OS X can read that. So to get the data off it you'll need to rehook ot up to the G4 get the data from it. Then if you want to use it on the PC, to a quick wipe of the hard drive and reformat it to NTFS or FAT and then the PC will like it.

no no... i think you're misunderstanding.

i don't want to use this hdd on my pc. i don't need it. all i need are some of the files that are on the hdd. i can't get them through the imac, because the hdd won't boot properly. there's something wrong with the hdd that i had to remove it from the imac to put it on my pc so i can explore it and rip the files that i need. the only problem is that i can't explore the drive.
 
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Well if the drive will not work on OS X. Then it won't work either on the PC. Because the format the drive is in can't be accessed by the PC. It can only be accessed by OS X in the format it is in now. And since it will not work in OS X I have to idea even if you cen recover the data from that drive. I think it's screwed.

But I'm sure someone else will know a way to salvage the data. I surely don't.
You could try putting the drive on OS X and using disk utility on it to try to repair it. That is a long shot but worth a try.

This assumes the drive is in extended format. If it's in NTFS or FAT and the PC can't access it either then the drive is dead.
 
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Do you by any chance have linux on your PC? If you do, you can install hfsutils onto linux and access the drive that way. It's a little involved but possible.
 
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If you have the OSX install disc you should try to repair the drive in the machine it was in.
 

chscag

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there's vital information on a bad hdd from my imac g4 that i need soon.

i took the hdd out (40gb maxtor) and put it in my pc. i know that the pc can't readily read it because it's a different format.

the bios sees the hdd
device manager sees the hdd
my computer does NOT see the hdd

i tried using macdrive 8 and hfsexplorer... neither of them acknowledge the existence of an apple hard drive.

is there any other way (without the use of an apple tower or spending lots of money) to retrieve this information off the hdd?

Neither MacDrive 8 nor HFS Explorer will be able to "see" or read the drive until you assign it a drive letter in Windows. Open Disk Manager, right click on the drive, assign it the next drive letter. Reboot the Win machine. Now go back and try to read the drive.

You do know how to use Disk Manager, right? You access it from computer management - administrative tools.

Let us know.

Regards.
 
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Neither MacDrive 8 nor HFS Explorer will be able to "see" or read the drive until you assign it a drive letter in Windows. Open Disk Manager, right click on the drive, assign it the next drive letter. Reboot the Win machine. Now go back and try to read the drive.

You do know how to use Disk Manager, right? You access it from computer management - administrative tools.

Let us know.

Regards.

it says the drive is unknown and not initialized. it will only show my other drives.
 

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