URGENT question. Re: Mac reading external Seagate HD!

I hooked up our Seagate external HD tonight to get my backed-up data from my PC onto my Mac.

I thought I could just turn the drive off and unplug the USB after I was done copying my files... was I wrong?

Now the drive won't boot. My husband cannot read it with his PC and it asks him to format. I cannot read it with my Mac, it asks me if I want to initialize it.

Is there something about READING the data that has changed the HD? Did I "dismount" the drive improperly?

Can this situation be rectified without reformatting and destroying the data? I would appreciate any info - my hubby is really freaking out right now. He is still recovering from a hd failure where he has gotten a new hd this week and was still in the process of recovering data from this external HD I just screwed up.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

well I had the same problem using a seagate it's not the seagate it's self when you don't eject the drive properly the mac will corrupt the boot sector of the harddrive the the data is not lost i did recover mine.. sadly i can not tell you how to do it unless you have access to a pc the mac might have a program to do it maybe diskwarrior. the pc has various programs that will repair this. i'll lookin to it as well I understand the panic i was freaked out as well

 

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/ if you have the money this is the only program i know of that should do it on mac hope that helps

 

And another question... does anyone know if those programs to recover files "deleted" from memory sticks etc .(eg. accidental reformatting of camera storage devices) might work to fix this external HD problem I'm having?

And does anyone have any that are recommended for Mac? (I actually have a memory stick that needs to be recovered as well and I'm looking for SW to do this with).

Thanks!

 

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/download.htm free trial hope it helps

 

I'm thinking that since I've already got my data off the external HD, that my husband should use a PC based recovery software to clean up this mess (I might make it worse by cleaning it up for a Mac. The hard disk is FAT32.

Thanks for the free trial of photorescue! I might purchase it.

 

http://www.download.com/TestDisk-PhotoRec-OS-X-/3000-2238_4-10511791.html?tag=lst-0-4

this one is free thats sounds better to me

 

if you choose to use a pc to do it this programs works great
http://www.ptdd.com/ptdmoreinfo.htm

 

Realsurreal: That Partition Table Doctor looks pretty technical. How user friendly is it?

Have you heard of Get Data's Recover My Files software? It is highly rated by TuCows...

I guess I could post on the non Mac forums for this too...

 

If you're going to recommend PTDD's software, you should register with them. They give 30% commission on sales referrals! Go to Affiliate in the top gray navigation box on their site...

 

It seems like the partition table got corrupted somehow. There a few utilities that I know but most are linux-based and its hard to recover without prior knowledge of the partition table.
If you really did that, what probably caused the corruption was turning the drive off before unplugging the USB cable. You should really eject the drive (or in wondows, remove safely), but just unplugging the USB cable will hardly cause this kind of harm. My guess is that when you turned it off some data ended being written where it shouldn't.

 

Just a thought for the future Georgine. Next time before plugging out/switching off your external harddrive, left click on the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE icon on the bottom-right corner in your taskbar. Click on the device that pops up. Then it will say the device is safe to remove, THEN switch off the harddrive and then plug the USB out.

Also another tip, if you are using your external harddrive, DO NOT switch of your laptop/pc. FIRST remove external harddrive, THEN switch off your laptop/pc. If you don't do it like that, you can say it's like a power failure for your external harddrive. You won't notice at first, but it does create bad sectors and is not good for the harddrive and on the long run, you will start getting bad sectors, lost clusters, etc.

This is not a must, but definetely a recommendation!

 

well im pretty sure this is the program i used to fix mine(pttd) but the program should have the hard drive show up i'ts not really hard to figure out usually C: is the main hard drive and the external will show up depending on how many drives you have as being E: or F: on down it will probably be greyed out. As for that other program im not familar with it sorry .

i'ts not really hard to do just make sure you've selected the proper drive. if you uncertain you could unplug the external open the program check the drive letters close the program plugin the exteranl and reopen the program and compare it should show a new one(as seagate something) that is greyed out or gives and error message. I hope this helps

 

the eject thing is way more important on the mac i've never had windows do that to a drive flash or external but on the mac when you plug something in thats a flash drive or an external an icon should pop up on the desktop to eject right click and eject drive or open up the mac hd icon and on the left side is the list of drives on the computer the external drives are orange and have an eject icon beside it click and when it disappears it should be safe to eject. You hdon't have to eject printers or scanners just flash or external drives.

 

Thanks for the tips on disconnecting media. I guess I need to adjust to being more careful about it. I think I created a bad MBR tonight on our external HD.

Ugh. Oh well, we'll get it sorted. We're looking at recovery sw right now.

 

Dude, she isn't running Windows. there is nothing that says 'Safely remove hardware" nor is there a taskbar. This is the Apple part of the forum. Silly rabbit trixs are for kids.

 

I knew what he meant though even if I am not running Windows. I never had to tell windows i was done with the hard drive though, so it didn't occur to me I might have to with the Mac. Especially since I didn't have to tell the Mac that it was there in the first place.

We're going to DL a partition/data recovery program today for PC's and get the info back. We didn't want to use the Mac to do it because it's primarily a drive for backing up our windows PCs. We thought that we might make the drive only Mac compatible if we used the mac to fix it.

Oh well. I'll probably NEVER make this mistake again, right?

 

Hey, everyone learns sometimes. It's better early than never or after you destroyed something important.

 

There's a program called Get Data Back...The best program that I use when my ext HD had some MFt problem...very usefull...either get it on mininova or send me an email I'll send you via email...

 

Get Data Back is one of the ones we're looking at. We found a site that rated data recovery software

http://data-recovery-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

and are looking at one other one listed as well.

Thanks for the offer!

 

With the mac and PC sharing the external drive, keep the format in FAT32. As with the PC the MAC must un-mount the drive. When ever you dismount watch the activity light, when it quits flashing rapidly it is save to power down and dismount. Same for the PC.

SpinRite by GRC.com is another disk utility that works well.

 

Thanks for the file format info advice. I'll check out SpinRite, too.