Help! External hard drive woes

[Pomme]

Hi everyone,

I'm in a bit of a predicament. My laptop shipped off to Apple for repairs yesterday for the second time in three months. (It's been a rough couple of weeks in the Pomme household.) The good news is that I have everything backed up on a Lacie external harddrive. The bad news is that I just remembered a deadline I have next week -- for a document that is, right now, only on the external harddrive and my iBook. I have access to a PC, but the harddrive has only previously been used with a Mac. On top of that, it's a Firewire config. Can I even hook this thing up to the PC desktop I'd be using? If so, how do I go about doing this? I realize I'm something of a dolt when it comes to computers; my dear little iBook has always been so self-explanatory. I just want to be cautious so that I don't ruin what I have saved on my external hd. But I also need a solution to this problem -- my laptop won't be fixed within the week, and I need access to this data!

Any suggestions would be welcome!

A very worried Pomme.

 

[dukebound85]

is the drive formatted in ntfs? hopefully not hfs as then only a mac could access it.

if it is ntfs, just plug it into a pc and you should be fine. note that the pc has to have firewire to hook up if the hard drive is firewire only

 

[Pomme]

is the drive formatted in ntfs? hopefully not hfs as then only a mac could access it.

if it is ntfs, just plug it into a pc and you should be fine. note that the pc has to have firewire to hook up if the hard drive is firewire only

Yikes. I don't know what that means at all. I'm not seeing those letters on the box, though it does tell me that it is a "PC or Mac with built-in FireWire interface." Does that mean I can use both, or just one once I've used it for the first time? Also, are there any converters out there -- some cord I could buy that has one on one end and the other on the other? I did a quick search, and I'm not having much luck finding anything that isn't wildly expensive. Any ideas?

 

[dukebound85]

Yikes. I don't know what that means at all. I'm not seeing those letters on the box, though it does tell me that it is a "PC or Mac with built-in FireWire interface." Does that mean I can use both, or just one once I've used it for the first time? Also, are there any converters out there -- some cord I could buy that has one on one end and the other on the other? I did a quick search, and I'm not having much luck finding anything that isn't wildly expensive. Any ideas?

well if you just used it with your mac, as in you got the hard drive and plugged it to your mac without doing anything, i would say its ntfs. thats what mine is.

does your pc have a firewire port like your ibook? if so then plug it in. if not, just go to a pc that does and get the file that way and email it to yourself or burn data cds of the files you need.

hopefully that helps

if the drive has both a usb and firewire interface, that may be easier as every pc pretty much has usb but not all have firewire.

for instance, with my macbook, i have an external and i am able to use it while both in windows and in os x with no problems at all

i assume you know how to get to your external in windows but if you dont, click my computer and you should see it labeled as drive f or something. for instance mine syas, mybook drive f, i think

 

[ElectricSheep]

Yikes. I don't know what that means at all. I'm not seeing those letters on the box, though it does tell me that it is a "PC or Mac with built-in FireWire interface." Does that mean I can use both, or just one once I've used it for the first time? Also, are there any converters out there -- some cord I could buy that has one on one end and the other on the other? I did a quick search, and I'm not having much luck finding anything that isn't wildly expensive. Any ideas?

It depends on what actions you took when you first got the external hard drive. If, when you plugged it in to your Mac, you were promted to "initialize" a disk, your drive is likely to be formatted as HFS+. If not, its possible that your drive came pre-formatted FAT32.

I somehow suspect that your external drive is formatted as HFS+. In such a case, you need extra software to be able to read it on a PC running Windows XP. Simply plugging it in will not work.

 

[dukebound85]

haha yea sorry. each time i said ntfs i meant fat32. i just got done formatting a partition ntfs for bootcamp