external hd problem & disk warrior

[chamilton]

HELP! I have an external hd that I need to get info off of. The disk spins and makes all the normal sounds, but the computer will not acknowledge it. I've tired other macs, same thing....

I tried disk warrior. Put it in, hit the C button until you see the apple icon and it took hours & still nothing. Computer seemed to be getting hot, so I turned it off.

Help anyone!

 

[mad jew]

What format is the external drive? I don't think DiskWarrior will work with FAT32, FWIW.

 

[NuDarwin]

okay, hold-down C isn't working out for ya. change the startup disk to the DiskWarrior CD in sys prefs, then click the restart button in sys prefs. wait for it. don't worry about your computer getting hot; just put it on a flat hard surface. if it gets dangerously hot (extremely unusual), it will automatically turn off.

true, diskwarrior can't rebuild fat32 drives. but in v3.3 and later (not sure about pre-3.3) it will tell you the format once diskwarrior has loaded. if it says anything other that hfs+ for format, don't do it.

 

[chamilton]

Thank you so much. I finally figured it out! I've never used disk warrior before & I finally figured out that by pushing "preview" it put the icon on my computer to see all of my files. Got them off the disk & will be trashing the disk!