[MSM Hobbes]

Ok, had my Seagate external hard drive hooked up to my Apple MacBook, went to disconnect it via Finder "eject",,, after hitting the 'eject' icon, it sat there for quite some time [~1 minute or so], I thought it had 'ejected', so I unplugged the cord from the laptop, and then error comes up, stating that device was not disconnected properly.

So, tried to plug it back in a few days later, and via MacBook [OS 10.6 SL] says that the device is not found. Via the Dell laptop [Win XP], when plugging it in, states that device is not formatted, asking me if I want to format it.

Please please please tell me that all of the photos and docs that are on there are NOT gone to the netherbyte world. What can / should I do to get the photos/docs/etc back to being readable?

Thanks!


PS: save the 'help' of telling me that I should have all the info that was on this HD saved onto another... that is what I was getting ready to do, after having bought a pair of Buffalo external HD's.

[BLT]

The XP error message could be as simple as the drive being formatted for the MAC (MAC OS Extended (Journaled) most likely). - Unless you had it formatted as FAT32 in which case ignore that :-)

On your MAC what happens if you open Disk Utility and look at the drive? If it's showing as faded in the list then you could try clicking it and then hitting the Mount icon.

See how you get on with that for starters.

[MSM Hobbes]

Thanks... the external HD was formatted as FAT32 originally, as it was purchased and used for storage before I acquired Apple computers.

Ok - when replugging the external HD in, I still get the "this device is not readable by this computer", with the options of "initialize" - "ignore" - "eject", and I've selected the "eject" route. Then, I've gone to Disk Utility, and tried to mount the greyed out icon, but nothing changes, stays grey... and then the external HD still shows nothing when replugging into the MacBook, or the Dell.

Next?

[MSM Hobbes]

Just as a follow-up... the HD had crashed. Worst fears were that had lost 30k photos + numerous documents, powerpoints, Excel files, etc. However, after a couple hours and then days storage in deep freeze, was able to reclaim all items.

Moral of this story - do NOT ever procrastinate about backing up your HD items!