Problem with External HD

[kelvinjohn]

Hey guys whats up, I have a question for you which is driving me crazy big time and I hope one of you guys will have the answer for that. Anyways, here is my problem that I have a Mac G5 OSx 10.4 and I am using an external Lacie drive which has Firewire connection, the problem is that the OSx 10.4
somehow is not looking at the external drive even though it was working properly before but suddenly it was gone from the desktop. I tried this HD on WIn2k and WIn2k found this drive but could not access it because it has HFS on it. My problem is that if I will RECOVER the data on Win2k by using any data recovery product, would I be able to transfer it back to Mac as I have to format the External drive to NTFS so that I will copy the data from the recovered drive and the Mac wont be able to see that external drive because it has NTFS (I guess). Make long story short, I need to know that is there any data recovery software available which is Mac based so that I will be able to transfer all the files from my damaged External HD to my internal HD of Mac and I dont have to go back to Win2k. Please help me out in this regards and forgive me if I made any mistakes as this is the first time I am posting on this forum.

Thanks

Kelvin

[slooksterpsv]

First of all, are the firewire ports on your mac bad? 2 have you restarted your computer and then tried plugging it in? 3 create a new user and login as that person and connect the drive? 4 turn on the drive (if it has a power switch) then plug it in? 5 wait a few moments to see if it recognizes it - this holds very true for OS X, it takes about 30 seconds for my macs to detect mine. 6 plug in the firewire drive then restart the computer. 7 go to system profiler and see what firewire shows when you have it connected. 8 open disk utility and manually mount it. I may have more later on to try.

[kelvinjohn]

hey slooksterpsv, thanks for your reply it really means a lot for me, talking about the ports, they are ok as I am using other HD same Manufacturer but different size and its working fine and even I took that damaged HD to different Mac osx, it did'nt work over there as well. As you know now that I have restarted the system multiple times and there is no power switch on the HD and as soon as I plug in the good HD, it picks it up right away. Talking about using disk utility, I checked it but its only showing the Mac HD and DVD but not showing the bad HD but again if I put the good one, the Disk utility shows it as firewire HD. Please tell me whats next.
THanks

[slooksterpsv]

You may have to reformat it cause it sounds like it may - more like probably - has errors in the FS. If you have your tiger cd's connect up the drive and boot off of the CD's. That may just may let you connect it in order to repair it. Otherwise google for an application on Windoze to fix it.

[slooksterpsv]

http://www.filebasket.com/product.php[id]88417[SiteID]filebasket
Its a demo but see if that works

[kelvinjohn]

Hey slooksterpsv whats up, first of all sorry for the late reply as I just got home did all the steps and now I am writing you back. The utility name FILERECOVERY did work and it found the HD and showed me the HFS and the files. But the problem is that it is shwoing me the files in the Ascending order i.e. it has sorted out all file according to their extensions and make the directory of every extension means if I have .mov , It has sorted out all the .mov file in one directory such as DIR01.MOV and so on. IT has changed all the directory structure and changed all the file names and now I cannot be able to find what file I am missing. As my brother does the video editing on Mac and uses this HD for transporting the data, so now all of his Final Cut files are gone I have to bring all the files with their proper name and directory structure as they all connected to each other in Final cut, are you following me, I hope. Make long story short that is there any software available which will do the recovery without changing the file names and directory structure. I hope you will have something for me. THanks for your understanding and I will be waiting for your reply.
Thanks

[Gokhan]

disk warrior or techtool pro or norton might do

[kelvinjohn]

Thanks for the advice GOKHAN, I tried Disk Warrior but it could'nt find the drive as the OS is not seeing the drive at all, I will try the TechTool tonight though. Any more suggestions anyone has will be wolcome.