New iMac won't show external drive

[dgreener]

I just bought my first iMac and I tried plugging my WD ibook external HDD into it and it won't show up at all. I tried looking in disk utilities and on the desktop and it doesn't show at all. I have been using the drive on a windows computer for a while and I know that i will probably have to be reformatted, but I thought that I would at least be able to read from it beforehand?

Any advice would be great.
Thanks

 

[GGJstudios]

I just bought my first iMac and I tried plugging my WD ibook external HDD into it and it won't show up at all. I tried looking in disk utilities and on the desktop and it doesn't show at all. I have been using the drive on a windows computer for a while and I know that i will probably have to be reformatted, but I thought that I would at least be able to read from it beforehand?

Any advice would be great.
Thanks

Yes, you should be able to see the drive, regardless of the format. It's most likely NTFS, which Mac OS X can read natively, anyway. Check your cable connections and try different ports, if possible.

 

[dgreener]

Still no luck. It's not showing up anywhere that I can see...

 

[GGJstudios]

Still no luck. It's not showing up anywhere that I can see...

Try mounting it on the Windows PC, then make sure you properly eject it before unplugging. Then try mounting again on the Mac. It may not help, but it's worth a shot.

 

[dgreener]

Try mounting it on the Windows PC, then make sure you properly eject it before unplugging. Then try mounting again on the Mac. It may not help, but it's worth a shot.

That totally worked! thanks man!