Freecom hard drive not readable on PC!Help please.

[dougens]

i have just bought a freecom 500gb hard drive told that it was readable and writable on both pc and mac platforms.

i have used other externals like this which were used first on pc and are formatted as MS dos Fat 32 and they work with my mac.

however, my drive has been used on mac first and is formatted as mac os x journaled. i did not format it though it was automatically done like this. i have lots of stuff on it and need to transfer to pc.
is the only way to reformat drive as fat 32?

also when the drive is used with a pc it comes up and makes a noise etc and in the taskbar it says the device is working properly.but in my computer it is not there and cant be found.

any help greatly appreciated.
thanks.

 

[Str8edgepunker]

Use the free trial of this:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

 

[dougens]

thanks but i i want it to be used with lots of pc's etc and not have to install mac drive on each one

thanks

 

[chscag]

First, I've never known a hard drive to be formatted automatically when attached..... Somehow, perhaps unknowingly to you, you reformatted it to HFS+. Anyway....

If you wish to use that drive between your PCs and a Mac machine, it will have to be re-formatted to FAT-32. Backup all the data on it first, and then use Disk Utility to erase the drive, create a new single MS DOS partition and format it as FAT-32.

Note: You can not use XP or Vista to format a 500 Gb drive to FAT-32. Either use Disk Utility from OS X or some other third party software such as Linux GParted or Partition Magic if you happen to have a copy.

Regards.