[deathpunk]

this relates to sharing external drives between a os x and xp machines.
i plugged in a seagate 320gb external drive, FAT 32 formatted, into my mac mini. threw an alias of the drive into the movies folder, in order to see what front row made of the collection of films, tv shows and music videos i had collected.
great, it sees them! hey, what a nice interface. oh look a little preview of the clip. great. just need to get a dvi to video adapter and this is going under the telly, optical audio into my surround amp, everyone's happy.....
until front row locked, not allowing me to force quit. so i had to shut down using the power button. restart and the mac does not recognize the disc and it needs to be formatted.
not readable by pc either.
bang goes 200gb or so of media.

this happened to a work colleague with a smaller seagate. powering down the drive does not eject it safely. shutting down the mac with the drive in seems to do the same thing., corrupting the drive.

my questions are:

is my data gone forever? short of a data recovery company (lots of money)
what is the best way to share data between osx and xp?

hope this can help save others the trauma of losing stuff

[drummerbull]

I'm not sure exactly how your drive is getting corrupted, but i have used a few data recovery programs on drives that the partition table has gotten corrupted. I think the best one that i have used is called Synchronize! Pro X. I used this on a drive that had a corrupt partition table and i was able to get all the data back. Give it a try!

[Headrush]

Originally Posted by drummerbull

I'm not sure exactly how your drive is getting corrupted, but i have used a few data recovery programs on drives that the partition table has gotten corrupted. I think the best one that i have used is called Synchronize! Pro X. I used this on a drive that had a corrupt partition table and i was able to get all the data back. Give it a try!

I've had success with the GetDataBack programs: GetDataBack for NTFS and GetDataBack for Fat.

These are not free programs, but I have used them several times in my business and been successful. I would try the one drummerbull suggested first since it is free, and if it is just the Partition Info or File Allocation Tables, recovery should have a good chance of succeeding.

If damage was more severe, like a head crash and you absolutely required some files, I would go GetDataBack.
(Be prepared, this program can actually run for over a week non stop depending on the damage to the drive)

[deathpunk]

thanks for the advice.
i've had a look at data rescue II, but it doesn't see the disk, as it's unmountable.
with any of these data recovery progs do i have to reformat the drive first and then try to recover stuff or is there something i'm missing?

if an external disc was formatted for mac first is it less likely to become corrupted??

[Headrush]

Originally Posted by deathpunk

thanks for the advice.
i've had a look at data rescue II, but it doesn't see the disk, as it's unmountable.
with any of these data recovery progs do i have to reformat the drive first and then try to recover stuff or is there something i'm missing?

if an external disc was formatted for mac first is it less likely to become corrupted??

No, at least the programs I mentioned the disk doesn't have to be mounted.
It works at a lower access level than that.

You would need access to a Windows machine or need to make a boot CD with the program on it.

Do NOT format.

[deathpunk]

ok.no format!
i re-read the getdataback site and i think i need to remove the disk from its enclosure and plug in via ide(to my xp machine). if it's seen in the bios then we could be in business.

does that sound right to you?

[Headrush]

Originally Posted by deathpunk

ok.no format!
i re-read the getdataback site and i think i need to remove the disk from its enclosure and plug in via ide(to my xp machine). if it's seen in the bios then we could be in business.

does that sound right to you?

yes

[deathpunk]

did that(ide etc) and used gdb and it found most, but not all, of my files .
thanks, everyone, for your advice