Lacie hard drive not recognized

[voluntarytrade]

I recently downloaded the update to 10.5.9, and since that time, I have had problems with my LaCie external hard drive. For awhile I was simply getting error messages but could still access the drive, but now I can't access it at all. I went into Disk Utility and the drive is still listed, but the options to Repair and Verify were not available. Any thoughts?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I recently downloaded the update to 10.5.9...

Huh? 10.5.9 doesn't exist... do you mean 10.5.7, or 10.4.9?

For awhile I was simply getting error messages...

What was the exact wording of these error messages?

 

[voluntarytrade]

My apologies. I meant 10.5.7.

I don't recall the exact wording, but the gist was that I was given "limited access" to the drive.

 

[Jiraiyaraj]

yea....i'm sorta having such problems with 10.4.11......i connected my friend's 250 gb external hard disk to ma mac and when i try to copy some files to it.....it says "access limited".....while i can do that on windows

i'm a lot backdropped in computer knowledge

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

What format is the external drive in -- FAT32? HFS+?

If you never "formatted" or "partitioned" your drive when you got it, then most likely it's in FAT32 format (which is decidedly a "Windows-centric" format).

 

[Jiraiyaraj]

yea it is FAT32 fomat....it was never used on a mac computer before.....and thank u

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

My suggestion would be to reformat the drive to HFS+ ("Mac OS Extended") format for much better compatibility with your Mac, unless you also need to use the drive on a Windows machine.

Formatting, of course, destroys all data -- so you should back up all existing data onto another hard drive before formatting the external drive.