External Hard Drive wont mount

T

themommyllama

Registered
I have an Imac with Leopard. I'm new to macs and i forgot to eject my

external harddrive (Seagate brand). I've bought DiskWarrior (the latest

version) and rebooted my mac to run the program. It recognized the

drive, but said it was not supported.

(i used to use it with my pc, but it did,once, run on the mac- until i yanked the cord out!)

Is there an issue with formatting that i need to get around so that my mac can read the drive to repair?

Is there any other option for me to get the EXTREMELY valuable info off of the Ex. Hard Drive?
(i already tried going back to my pc, to see if i could back-up the info there, but my pc told me the drive was in the wrong format. I went to put the drive in the proper format, but was warned that all of the data would be erased)

bottom line- i just REALLY need to get the data off of the hard drive.
HOW can I do this?!

who is up to the challenge?
 
It probably said it was not supported because it sound like the drive is in the normal PC format, not the Mac HFS+. Your Mac was probably reading or writing to it before it got disconnected. You might not be able to recover if your filesystem is messed up (it sounds like it is).
 
You may need to weigh the cost of losing the data vs. spending the money on data recovery software. I have had a fair amount of luck using this:
http://www.prosofteng.com/
also look into this one:
http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/
It really is a good idea to keep some sort of data recovery software around for those dreaded "Oh Crap!" moments. If you are able to get the data off, see if disk warrior can repartition the drive so you can add the data back on there. Also, always remember to back up your important data.
 
If it is hooked up with FireWire it sometimes helps to start your Mac while deleting the PRAM, by pressing CMD ALT P R (4 keys) at startup intill you hear the Startup-Chime for the second or third time.
Then start your Mac the normal way. I have had this a few times with an external harddisc. It connects perfect with a USB-Cable but was unable to mount with a FireWirecable. After deleting the PRAM it connected again over Firewire without problems.
Also it is preferable to erase a new/used external harddisc for Mac with DiskUtility in the "HSF+ Journaled" taste.
 
Try macdrive (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/) - you can read mac formatted drives from a windows OS - it's a great program and I regard it as a must for any cross platform user. You can even grab a trial version to get your data off the drive. Cheers, PB.

Edit- Oops - this reply was meant for a different thread - one where firewire bus would not pick up the drive. (Good advice for that situation is to first fully power down your mac - unlpug for ten minutes - then reboot and see if your firewire bus comes back - worked for me).
Themommyllama - If the drive needs proprietry drivers from seagate then you will need to talk to them. But I would be surprised if you couldn't Plug'n'play on a PC, especially with macdrive installed.
 
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if you do not care for the data that is there on the external drive then connect the External Hd to the mac, open up disk utility(in applications/utilities) and then select the ext Hd on the left side and then click on erase( select the format as Mac Os X extended/journaled)

# the mac will recognize the external HD.
 
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