Read hard drive formatted in 10.8 in 10.6 (or Win7)?

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Level 1

10 points

Read hard drive formatted in 10.8 in 10.6 (or Win7)?

Hello,

I have recently downgraded my Macbook Pro from Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard. I'm very happy with the change, my only issue is with external hard drive. It's formatted in the new format and 10.6 cannot read.

Is there any way to read Mountain Lion formatted hard drive either in 10.6 or under PC with Win 7 (I'm willing to pay for some 3rd party app if price is reasonable)? I have like 100 GB of data on that drive I want to copy, but I'm not looking forward to doing it the hard way (reinstall Lion, copy data elsewhere, downgrade again....).

Thanks for any advice.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 15'', 2.66 Ghz i7, 8 GB RAM

Posted on Jun 5, 2013 6:23 AM

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Answer 1

varjak paw

Level 10

182,686 points

Jun 5, 2013 8:43 AM in response to Davon Semris

I'm not aware of any format in Mac OS X 10.8 that 10.6 cannot read. How is the drive formatted?

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Answer 2

Davon Semris Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 5, 2013 10:04 AM in response to varjak paw

This disk was formatted under Lion... So there must be some special format type under 10.7 up. Don't ask me details, I'm not a tech. :-)

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Answer 3

Camelot

Level 9

59,325 points

Jun 5, 2013 10:39 AM in response to Davon Semris

The question really is one about which format the disk is actually using. That might provide a clue.

Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and select the drive. The info pane at the bottom should indicate the drive format. It's been a while, but the only differences I can think of beetween 10.6 and 10.7 are ExFAT support (added in 10.6.5) and encrypted volumes.

Either that, or just find a friend (or local Apple Store Genius) who has a 10.7 system you can attach the drive to temporarily.

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Answer 4

Davon Semris Author

Level 1

10 points

Jun 5, 2013 10:46 AM in response to Camelot

Disk utility doesn't say much either.

Encryption is a possibility though. I'm not certain but I might have used it.

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Answer 5

varjak paw

Level 10

182,686 points

Jun 5, 2013 1:19 PM in response to Davon Semris

Formatting the disk as encrypted would indeed keep 10.6 from being able to mount it, and if that's what you did there's no workaround I know of. You'll almost certainly have to connect the external drive back to a 10.8 system and get the data off of it, then reformat the disk without encryption.

Regards.

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