External Hard Drive Troubles?
Asked by
amandala (
445
)
November 30th, 2008
I’m trying to transfer a few files from my friend’s external hard drive onto my laptop. The icon to safely remove the hard drive comes up, but I can’t access the hard drive itself. I have no idea how to go about getting the files, but I kind of need them. (I have Vista, by the way, and I know it’s awful…my friend likes to remind me of that often.)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
4 Answers
How is your friend’s hard drive formatted? If it is Mac formatted, you won’t be able to read it without 3rd party software.
As simpleD said, if it is formated for a Mac, Vista won’t see poop. A simple way to see this is right click for properties and see what the file format is. If it is anything but NTFS, or FAT32(16), then it is mac formated (or something more proprietary.)
If this is the case, then the only way to get the stuff of the HDD is ether 3rd party software, or taking the files directly from your friend’s hard-drive, over a network. That usually works for me.
If you and your friend are split between a Mac and PC, and share files regularly, I would suggest you formate your external drives as FAT16, that being the best excepted between mac and PC, however it is unstable, meaning you should always safely remove the drive from both Mac and PC. I think FAT32 works for Leopard and Vista\XP, but I can’t remember.
Thanks. Thankfully, he is a “tech whiz” (his words, not mine) and knows how to do these things. I’m just useless when it comes to technology.
@amandal(I)a:
Hey! At least you found fluther! That is the fist step toward the wonderful life of geek\nerdizzam of technology!
omg. Mac actually has a proper spelling for nerdizzam… I… don’t… know… how to… feel about that…
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
