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General discussion

Moved external HD from XP to Mac and now unreadable - help

May 7, 2008 8:43AM PDT

Hi, I recently upgraded to an iMac with OSX. I took a hard drive that I used on my PC and moved it over to my mac. It worked fine for about 3 weeks, but 2 days ago quit working. It is no longer readable by either system now.

I have many photos (backed up to DVD) on there along with the database that I need.

It is formatted FAT.

Any suggestions on what to do and how to get my data off there?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Sounds like a job for Drive Savers, but
May 7, 2008 9:39AM PDT

you have not given too much information away about this drive and how it is attached to the iMac.

Are you saying that you get an error message when the drive is attached?
If so, what is it?

What capacity is it?
Does the drive spin up?
USB or Firewire?
What size is the Database?
What have you tried?

The fact that it does not mount on windows or OS X should give cause for alarm.

P

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". It is no longer readable by either system now. "
May 7, 2008 9:44AM PDT

That's bad. Did you happen to leave it in FAT32 format? Those do vanish with regularity. The naysayers argue with me over that until they lose one. Here's a little hope.

Go get the demos of GETDATABACK and ZERO ASSUMPTION RECOVERY to run on the Windows PC and see if they fix it. If they do, then it's strictly a new question of "Are my files worth this much?"

Once you fix that, research MACFUSE and try NTFS+MACFUSE to get some reliability plus invest some time to put those files you can't lose on DVDRW media.
Bob

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We may have success. THANK YOU! (tentatively, that is!)
May 8, 2008 1:51AM PDT

Hmmmm, installed GETDATABACK and am currently running it. It appears to be finding files - and $69 is worth every penny if I need to purchase it to recover. (I do have 90% of the drive backed up, but it would probably take 12 hours to recover - and that 10% may include a few files I don't want to lose.)

So.... the next question is - if I DO get all the files off, back them up to my PC, what is the best way to get them from the PC to that hard drive once it's formatted correctly for the Mac? I could, I suppose, try to get it all networked, but if it's possible to just connect the drive and copy, that might be easier.

Suggestions?

Thanks

(I"ll let you know if it DOES recover the files.)

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Research MACFUSE
May 8, 2008 2:19AM PDT

Once all files are safe, look into MACFUSE for the Mac then test if you can use NTFS.
Bob

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Sounds good!
May 8, 2008 2:44AM PDT

Will do... I"m actually cool with whatever i need to do since I'm getting rid of my PC and only using Mac from now on.

Thanks again! Thanks for the help....

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regarding migrating OS, apps and files from XP to mac.
May 9, 2008 1:11PM PDT

hi, when you moved or copied your XP HD to the mac did you make sure and first divide the mac harddrive into two partitions and assign one for mac and one for XP witht the correct formatting for each? before you transferred? and then did you transfer the info to the correctly compatiblly formatted partition? That can make a big difference. Are you working with a laptop mac or desktop with one or two separate hard drives? On my laptop, I partition the harddrive- ( must do with enough ram and hard drive space alotted) into part for mac OS and part for XP. On my desktop, I actually have two separate hard drive banks- one is mac and one is XP. But in any case, I found that to transfer info and files from my old PC laptop- it worked better when I transferred files using a jump drive and installed software cleanly on the new computer because unlike Mac, windows and microsoft and adobe had some built in preventions from just copying one disk over on to another- it really works better doing a clean install then installing software apps then adding the files backed up from the other PC whether by CDs or jumpdrive. The limitations in transferring OS systems and software came from the PC software and OS because the companies want you to get authorization and not use the software without license on more than one computer. Mac OS and software is much easier to migrate a whole hard drive from one computer to another and not quite so tedious. but for PC it will run better in the long run if you don't try to holistically migrate over like one does with the mac. Hope that helps.
Cheri