Windows 7 Moving External Drive Files From iMac to PC

[croths]

Hello,
I have just moved back from mac to pc. I have a 4 year old LaCie External drive that has everything backed up from my mac. I know most of it will be useless but I need my budget spreadsheet and want my photos, and stuff like that.
Trouble is when I connect it to my new pc, Gateway One, is shows up in Devices and Printers but not as a clickable drive in My Computer. It's been tried on several other computers and laptops, all running windows 7, with the same result.
Could this be because it was used on a mac? I thought it would at lest show up, then I could get off it what was usable. The paperwork that came with the drive says it's good on either pc or mac. Or could it be too old for windows 7? I did go to their web site and download drivers, didn't help.
I'd appreciate any help or hints offered, I'm not very techy I'm afraid. Thanks very much.
By the way, my son tried it on his works laptop, running xp. He's not allowed to install anything so he couldn't let the windows drivers run. We thought maybe it still might show up in My Computer, but it didn't.

 

[Trouble]

Just a shot in the dark here, but do you know the format of the drive? If you used the MAC to format the drive you might have to resort to a third party solution to use the drive in Windows. Link Removed

 

[croths]

This drive was very briefly used on a pc then I went to mac. I didn't do a thing to it, just plugged it into the mac and away it went, worked smoothly with Time Machine and I was able to transfer the few files on it. Thanks for the link, I will look and see what I can do. Thanks again.

 

[Trouble]

It may be that the backup program did its' own formatting of the drive. Since there is not a one size fits all format for interoperability between windows and macs.
Windows likes NTFS (mac's not so much, read only), Windows and MACs can use FAT32 (but MACs seem to experience file corruption using this format). If your external disk is either of these two formats (not very likely) then it may be as simple as opening the disk management utility in Windows 7 and assigning a drive letter.
But it's more likely HFS, HFS+ or HFSx and you're going to need something like MacDrive.

EDIT: Note: Every available disk that can be used to store backups is listed. If you’ve partitioned a disk, the available partitions are listed. Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk that's connected to an AirPort Extreme, or to an iPod, iDisk, or a disk formatted for Microsoft Windows (NTFS or FAT format). If you select an NTFS or FAT-formatted disk, Time Machine prompts you to reformat the disk. Choose a different disk or reformat the disk in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Because reformatting erases any files on the disk, only do this if you no longer need the files or if you have copies of them on a different disk.
SOURCE: Link Removed - Invalid URL
Additionally if these "backed up" files and folders are in some type of proprietary archive format, used exclusively by Time Machine, it may be difficult to extract them for use on your Windows PC. If you still have the MAC, it may be better either to hook up the external back to the MAC and drag and drop the files onto the external drive, rather than having to worry about extracting them from the backup archive. Or and I wish I knew more about MAC networking, setting up a shared folder between the Windows 7 and the Mac and dropping the files that you need into that folder.
Link Removed - Invalid URL

 

[croths]

OK, I can't thank you enough!!!!!! I have copied off the drive the few things that are truly important to me. The rest is no longer needed. So I can format this drive and then it will be usable as a back up on windows? I high-lighted it and when I clicked 'format' I got a drop down menu which listed its file system as NFTS. If I DO format it do you think it will be usable? Thank you again.

 

[Trouble]

OK, I can't thank you enough!!!!!! I have copied off the drive the few things that are truly important to me. The rest is no longer needed. So I can format this drive and then it will be usable as a back up on windows? I high-lighted it and when I clicked 'format' I got a drop down menu which listed its file system as NFTS. If I DO format it do you think it will be usable? Thank you again.

Assuming that there is nothing physically wrong with the drive, formatting it as NTFS should be fine and make the drive useable for future purposes from within Windows 7.

 

[croths]

Once I'd made sure everything I needed was off and readable I formatted the external drive, restarted my computer and . . . it's not showing :O( Guess I need to buy a new drive. I must say thanks one more time, I've got my stuff.

 

[Trouble]

If you were able to format it from within Windows 7, that would suggest that it is probably still viable.
Make sure if it has an external power supply that you are using it and that the interface (usb or firewire) is plugged directly to a port on the computer, rather than a hub.
Open the disk management utility from within Windows 7 and see if it (the drive) requires any attention. You may need to initialize it or assign it an unused drive letter.

 

[croths]

I had looked in management before. This drive is in three parts, one being the primary, but right-clicking on any brings a greyed out menu so I can't reassign it a letter.0

 

[Trouble]

Open disk management, enlarge to cover the whole screen and use the snipping tool in windows 7 to take an image of the disk management utility so we can have a look at what you are talking about (see attachment).
Is the disk showing as off line? Sounds like you may be looking at the wrong drive or that you may have some work left to do regarding other partitions remaining on the drive. You may have to delete them all and format the whole drive or repartition it again but I hesitate to make any such suggestion without knowing we're both talking about the same thing.

 

[croths]

Here is my snippet.Link Removed

 

[Trouble]

my suggestion would be to right click the efi system partition on Disk1 and choose delete volume same with the 465.44 GB Healthy Primary Partition. Once the drive contains nothing but unallocated space, right click that and choose New Simple Volume, click next and next again, make sure Assign the following driver letter is selected and then next again, choose format this volumen with the following settings, leave ntfs, leave default allocation size, give it a volume name like ExternalBkup, check box Perform a quick format, and next again and finish.

 

[croths]

OK, I haven't done it yet. Just wanted to let you know that when I right click on the large primary partition I get the option to delete, but on the EFI partition all options are greyed out. Should I still delete the 465 GB partition?

 

[Trouble]

how good are you or should i say comfortable with a command prompt??
Open a command prompt and type
diskpart
and hit enter
that should bring up another DOS window titled diskpart.exe
in that type
list disk
and hit enter
This is the critical part, because if you mess up here and identify the wrong disk you'll likely be in some trouble, but it should be easy to identify the proper disk by it's size, you have two, one is 931GB (don't mess with that, that's your OS disk) the other is
465GB, and that is the one you want, so take careful note of the Disk Number. Once you are sure you have identified the disk number properly then type
select disk # (where # is the actual number of the disk you wish to clean) and hit enter
then type
clean
and hit enter
once you get the completed successfully, take a look at disk management and see if you're good to go.

 

[croths]

I did that, thanks for the good instructions - scary stuff though. This is what I get in disk management. Which one should I do please?

Link Removed

 

[Trouble]

just click OK. MBR is fine actually preferred.

 

[croths]

'Tis done!! Thank you very much indeed for all the help and for sticking with me through the day. First time I've ever used command prompt but you made it very clear. Thank you.

Maureen.

 

[Trouble]

Good work and glad to hear that you were able to resolve your issue. Thanks for posting back and updating your thread with the results.
Always glad to help where I can.
Thanks for joining our community and we hope to continue to see you around the forums.
Regards
Randy