Hey guys, 
I was trying to get my portable hard drive (WD 500GB) to work with my mac. Here's a quick recap of what I've done:
I used EASEUS partition master to create two partitions on the hard drive:
1) NTFS
2) FAT32 (Hoping it would be writable on my macbook)
Turns out even though the second partition is FAT32 my macbook for whatever reason still cannot write to it.
So I fired up the disk utility, chose Volume Format: MS-DOS (FAT) and hit Erase.
an error message popped up saying something about invalid arguments, and after that my HD is totally unusable both in the mac and on my PC.
Here is the log from disk utility:
**********
2010-03-14 20:29:05 +1100: Disk Utility started.
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Preparing to erase : “WDEFAT32”
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Partition Scheme: Master Boot Record
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: 1 volume will be erased
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Name : “WDEFAT32”
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Size : 105.0 GB
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT)
2010-03-14 20:29:39 +1100: Error with volume erase Invalid argument
2010-03-14 20:29:40 +1100: Erase complete.
2010-03-14 20:29:40 +1100:
**********
2010-03-15 01:21:52 +1100: Disk Utility started.
2010-03-15 01:23:03 +1100: Name : WD 5000BEV External Media
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
Disk Identifier : disk2
Media Name : WD 5000BEV External Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : USB
USB Serial Number : 57441D565845304139394D32303124
Device Tree : /PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7/@3:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
Location : External
Total Capacity : 465.8 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 0
-----------------------------------------
Steps I've taken after that:
1) Started up EASEUS partition master on my pc (it has a partition recovery function) however with the HD plugged in the software just will not start. (Unplug the HD and it works fine)
2) Started up Acronis disk director - exact same thing; program crashes at startup if the HD is plugged in and works just fine when I unplug it.
I have quite a lot of data in the NTFS partition that I definitely need to get back. If the thing is empty I can just go into the disk utility and setup a couple of new partitions (since apparently there are no partitions) but I can't do that cause I need to have the partitions recovered.
Any clues?
thanks
edit: couple of little more information:
I am running Windows 7 on the PC
and Leopard on the macbook
I was trying to get my portable hard drive (WD 500GB) to work with my mac. Here's a quick recap of what I've done:
I used EASEUS partition master to create two partitions on the hard drive:
1) NTFS
2) FAT32 (Hoping it would be writable on my macbook)
Turns out even though the second partition is FAT32 my macbook for whatever reason still cannot write to it.
So I fired up the disk utility, chose Volume Format: MS-DOS (FAT) and hit Erase.
an error message popped up saying something about invalid arguments, and after that my HD is totally unusable both in the mac and on my PC.
Here is the log from disk utility:
**********
2010-03-14 20:29:05 +1100: Disk Utility started.
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Preparing to erase : “WDEFAT32”
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Partition Scheme: Master Boot Record
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: 1 volume will be erased
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Name : “WDEFAT32”
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Size : 105.0 GB
2010-03-14 20:29:37 +1100: Filesystem : MS-DOS (FAT)
2010-03-14 20:29:39 +1100: Error with volume erase Invalid argument
2010-03-14 20:29:40 +1100: Erase complete.
2010-03-14 20:29:40 +1100:
**********
2010-03-15 01:21:52 +1100: Disk Utility started.
2010-03-15 01:23:03 +1100: Name : WD 5000BEV External Media
Type : Disk
Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted
Disk Identifier : disk2
Media Name : WD 5000BEV External Media
Media Type : Generic
Connection Bus : USB
USB Serial Number : 57441D565845304139394D32303124
Device Tree : /PCI0@0/USB7@1D,7/@3:0
Writable : Yes
Ejectable : Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No
Location : External
Total Capacity : 465.8 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported
Disk Number : 2
Partition Number : 0
-----------------------------------------
Steps I've taken after that:
1) Started up EASEUS partition master on my pc (it has a partition recovery function) however with the HD plugged in the software just will not start. (Unplug the HD and it works fine)
2) Started up Acronis disk director - exact same thing; program crashes at startup if the HD is plugged in and works just fine when I unplug it.
I have quite a lot of data in the NTFS partition that I definitely need to get back. If the thing is empty I can just go into the disk utility and setup a couple of new partitions (since apparently there are no partitions) but I can't do that cause I need to have the partitions recovered.
Any clues?
thanks
edit: couple of little more information:
I am running Windows 7 on the PC
and Leopard on the macbook