Just bought a new external hard drive.

[ingenioso]

It came in pre formatted as NTFS and I had macfuse and NTFS-3g installed from before.
I copied some 200GB (2TB WD HD) into the hard drive and then while copying stuff, Finder just hung and I had to restart my computer. After then when I restarted my external hard drive the hard drive would load but those 200 GB disappeared!! I mounted the hard drive on windows to safely eject it BUT on windows its disappeared too.

IDK what to do, I'm screwed if I can't get that 200GB back... What should I do??

 

[Makosuke]

Sounds like the NTFS partition got corrupted when whatever crashed crashed. Two things you can do:

1) Use Windows to run a disk check/repair and see if that resolves it.
2) Reformat the drive completely, preferably as something other than NTFS unless you REALLY need NTFS.

I'm assuming here that you still have the files that comprise that 200GB on your internal drive and just want the external back to normal. In which case option #2 is much better, and guaranteed to fix whatever went wrong. (Frankly, I always reformat first thing when I get a new drive anyway, even if it comes formatted, just to be careful.)

From a technical standpoint NTFS is a much better filesystem than FAT, but the lack of Mac support for writing it without an add on is enough of a problem that I'd stick to FAT unless you need support for files larger than 4GB. In which case you're running the risk of future problems if MacFuse flakes out on you.

Of course, an alternative if you're mainly using the drive with a Mac and don't need to do much on Windows would be to come at it the other way--format the drive as HFS+, and then install a Mac filesystem support add-on in Windows. I can't remember if there are any free ones, but they do exist, and if you're mostly accessing it on a Mac HFS+ is going to work more smoothly than the alternatives.

 

[ingenioso]

Sounds like the NTFS partition got corrupted when whatever crashed crashed. Two things you can do:

1) Use Windows to run a disk check/repair and see if that resolves it.
2) Reformat the drive completely, preferably as something other than NTFS unless you REALLY need NTFS.

I'm assuming here that you still have the files that comprise that 200GB on your internal drive and just want the external back to normal. In which case option #2 is much better, and guaranteed to fix whatever went wrong. (Frankly, I always reformat first thing when I get a new drive anyway, even if it comes formatted, just to be careful.)

From a technical standpoint NTFS is a much better filesystem than FAT, but the lack of Mac support for writing it without an add on is enough of a problem that I'd stick to FAT unless you need support for files larger than 4GB. In which case you're running the risk of future problems if MacFuse flakes out on you.

Of course, an alternative if you're mainly using the drive with a Mac and don't need to do much on Windows would be to come at it the other way--format the drive as HFS+, and then install a Mac filesystem support add-on in Windows. I can't remember if there are any free ones, but they do exist, and if you're mostly accessing it on a Mac HFS+ is going to work more smoothly than the alternatives.

I don't have a backup. Isn't there any other way I can try to retrieve all that stuff?

 

[Makosuke]

I don't have a backup. Isn't there any other way I can try to retrieve all that stuff?

Ouch.

Well, first try #1 above. If you're lucky, Windows will fix whatever got corrupted and the files will reappear.

If that fails, try data rescue software. My standard suggestion with a Mac-formatted drive is Data Rescue 3:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

...and since there's a PC version, maybe that will work for you:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue_pc.php

The good news is it should tell you what it can salvage and let you grab one test file before you pay, so you won't waste your money on something that won't work. Good luck, and remember, if you don't want to lose it, ALWAYS have a backup.