External Hard drive (WD) problems

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My imac wont recognise my wd 1tb external hard drive. I first of all plugged it into my xbox 360 to see if all my data was still there, all my files are fine.
i then went on to repair the hardrive, which read fine, in disk utility.
after the repair and verification, it said my hardrive was "ok".
still the mac wont read it and there is nothing on desktop.
how to do fix this problem I am running out of options.

something i maybe didnt mention is that there is no way i can erase or re-format as i have 30,000 + songs on there, plus sentimental photos that i have no copies of

moral of story = back your stuff up!!
if your still reading, thanx and hope 2 hear back ASAP
 

chscag

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2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
How is the drive formatted? (Probably FAT-32 if you can read it with your X-Box) If it's using FAT-32, you might try hooking it to a PC to see if it can be read and maybe you can copy your data off the drive at the same time.

And I'll tell you the same thing I advise everyone about placing valuable photos on a hard drive without keeping a backup.... Hard drives fail. If you can get your data off that drive, burn those photos to DVDs where they'll be a lot safer.
 
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how do i check what format it is?
after you replied yesterday the xbox went on NOT to read it, but has read it fine again today.
on another downer, my brothers pc has just died
so no where to back things up at the moment.....
what would happen to my data if i mounted the drive in disk utility??
thanks
 

chscag

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If Disk Utility can detect the drive, it will tell you which format it's using. But as I stated previously, since the X-Box can read from it, it's probably formatted to FAT-32. And, your data will be safe when viewing the drive from Disk Utility. Just make sure you don't go any further.
 
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hi, sorry took so long to get bak
my book is formated as Mac OS Extended (journeled)
im running snow leopard though.....
i duno if thats the problem, but i upgraded to snow leopard ages ago and the hard drive was fine after that for ages...
still works on the xbox though.....tried it in a pc and a similar thing happened
i could see the hardware but not what was on it....
 

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