can you please help with a PC problem...

[gabrioladude]

Let me say at the outset I am a somewhat “computer challenged” individual but do know (I think) some of the fundamentals. In other words I can do some things but once it gets too techie I quickly get beyond my knowledge level.

My question, on which I will elaborate, is that I can’t see my external hard drive on my PC laptop.

My main computer is a 20 iMac desktop. Several years ago I purchased a Western Digital 500gig “My Book” external hard drive to use as additional storage. For a variety of reasons (long story) I reformatted the HD on my Mac without due caution to the formatting protocol. You guessed it, afterwards the HD was only accessible by the Mac. I learned that the HD needed to be formatted MS Dos Fat 32 to work on both PC and Mac which I then proceeded to do on my Mac.

The HD still works fine on the Mac but I still can’t use it on the PC. When I use the Device Manager on my PC it sees the drive and recognizes the proper capacity in "properties" but the drive still does not appear in the “drive” portion of the "My Computer" screen nor does "Windows Explorer" recognize it. Therefore I have no way of accessing the HD to store or retrieve data from the PC.

What do I need to do to continue using this HD on both my Mac and PC.

Thanking you in advance for your help.

[gabrioladude]

I probably should have added that I am running XP not Vista on my laptop

[marjnap]

My hypothesis would be the drive letter is disabled or conflicting with something else. Look under "Disk Management" and if there is no letter assigned, right click on the drive and select assign drive letter, pick whatever letter you want and check My Computer again.

[Lowner]

As someone who admits he is "computer challenged", reformatting seems like a voyage into the unknown even if you had not told us of the subsequent problem.

I am another who is happy to use the damn things but know nothing about how or why they work (or don't). However I have this agreement with my PC: I promise not to go pressing buttons doing things I don't understand and in return it continues to work as it should.......most of the time anyway.

[René Damkot]

http://ogasawalrus.com/blog/node/208 or http://www.macwindows.com/disks2.html might help.

Alternatively: Copy everything, then reformat to FAT 32, copy everything back.

[Denisw]

Hi, As Marjnap indicated it might be as simple as a Drive Letter conflict so look in "Disk Management" as he advises. If that's not the case then I presume you cannot see the drive in "My Computer"! so you need to look in "Explorer" It should be listed in there with everything else(Right Click Start Button and choose "Explore" from the menu). If it does not appear in Explorer then you need to format the external drive using your PC not your Mac, so that it allocates a Drive Letter correctly, then look again to see if you can find it in "My Computer" and/or "Explorer". Incidentally I have a copy of XP running under bootcamp on my MP Pro and that drive is formatted in NTFS and works fine If you can use NTFS it offers more security than Fat and Fat32.

Hope this helps Denis

[BrandonSi]

Alternatively: Copy everything, then reformat to FAT 32, copy everything back.

Ditto.. Move it off the drive, reformat, move it back.

[gcobb]

http://ogasawalrus.com/blog/node/208 or http://www.macwindows.com/disks2.html might help.

Alternatively: Copy everything, then reformat to FAT 32, copy everything back.

End of thread...