time machine/partion is messed up

[xsjados]

its a long story but i made a partition in vista for time machine but after i formatted the partition for time machine and backed my stuff up i couldn't turn on my vista computer it says that it can recognize a hard drive so is there any way to fix this i already tried deleting the partition in disk utilities but it wont let me and i cant access all my windows data from my mac what do i do i have a lot of stuff on there of my family and vital work information that i need again is there any way to fix this plz help

 

[bmcgonag]

Okay, you say you made the partition in Vista, what do you mean more specifically?

Is it a Vista partition under boot camp?

 

[xsjados]

im not sure if this is what you meen but i wasn't on bootcamp its a separate computer (dell xps desktop)

 

[BobZune]

Not direct help, but ... please see the first post at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/205018/ -- and please try multiple sentences to explain the problem better so someone can help you.

The following may help, if my assumptions are right:

I assume this is an external drive that contains data from both the Dell/Vista computer and TimeMachine. [Time Machine formatting is better done on the Mac instead of Vista (and there are potential issues with partition tables and formats that can be dealt with once you understand the basics)].

Your best bet may be to install NTFS3G for Mac OS X and, assuming you can read the important Vista data, get it saved to some safe place -- like DVDs ( http://www.ntfs-3g.org/ ). I assume there is no problem with data on the Mac.

At that point, you can try more options - such as reformatting the drive.

 

[oculus42]

How are they connected?

When you say you made a partition in Vista, was it on an external hard drive, or on the Vista computer?

How is the Mac connected to the Time Machine drive? USB? FireWire? Network?