Problem with external HD

[jackal123uk]

Apologies if this question has been asked before but I've searched this and numerous other forums and haven't found the answer yet so here goes...

Since my old Winows laptop just died I figured it was time to make the switch and bought myself a macbook... However, I still have my external HD which holds all my music, photos and videos (200 GB, formatted ntfs and partitioned 3 ways).

After playing around for a few days I'd already figured out that my new OSX can read from but can't write to the ntfs volumes. The plan was to transfer each partition at a time to the internal HD and reformat the partitions in turn, jiggling the files around until the job was done - at least that was the plan...

After transfering the contents of the music partition to my macbook I set about using the disk ultility to reformat just that partition and this is where things took a turn for the worst. Instead of just the one partition being affected, all 3 are screwed up, under the disk utility the pysical drive itself is recognised but no partitions are present (the drive can't be mounted!!).

This is where I need your help, I'm pretty sure I can reformat the whole thing to reclaim the drive but I'd rather save my data first. If anyone knows of a solution or could point me in the direction of some software that could do the job you'd make me a happy man...

Thanks in advance..

 

[mklos]

It sounds like either Disk Utility screwed up the file systems on the partitions, or you accidentally formatted the entire HD instead of just that partition. I Hind sight is 20/20, but I would have created a folder for each partition on the MacBook and dragged off all of the data to your MacBook. Never screw around with partitions without backing up the data first because you never know what will happen.

If the partitions appear, but are grayed out, then you may possibly need to use some kind of Windows utility to get the partitions back in working order. Also, if you click once the partition and then click on Mount in the toolbar at the top does it mount? Mount may still be grayed out when you click on the partition. If so, then you may be screwed unless you can find a utility to rebuild the file system on the partitions you want back.

 

[jackal123uk]

thanks mklos...

none of the partitions show up in disk utility (greyed out or otherwise) and the disk won't mount no matter what I do.

I think you might be right about using a windows utility to rebuild the drive - it's now just a case of borrowing someone's windows machine...

Thanks again for your help...