Help! My Hard Drive won't work

Question

Help! My Hard Drive won't work

I have a 1TB portable WD HDD and i recently tried taking files from a Windows computer to put onto the hard drive, to use on my Mac.
When i came to plug my HDD into my Mac, up popped a message saying "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." Its full of files from movies and music to ALOT of Photoshop files for college!

Ive tried disk warrior the lot, ive read a **** of websites trying to find a solution and i just cant seem to get my Hard drive back.

Im really too nervous to even touch some stuff in disk utility. If anyone could help id be truly grateful!

Thanks.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Nov 20, 2013 1:00 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 20, 2013 1:20 PM in response to lewiskirkland

Can you still read the disk on a Windows computer? If so the files are safe, you can work out why it does not work on the Mac, if you cannot read it on the Windows computer than they are probably lost. You will need to re copy them from the Windows computer to the disk again.

Reply

Answer 2

Nov 20, 2013 1:42 PM in response to rack0 tack0

Thanks, but thats my problem i only got to plug my HDD into the windows computer and it asked me to format it but that would obviously delete all my data so i didnt, so i cant even check to see if its still there.

Reply

Answer 3

Nov 20, 2013 1:43 PM in response to lewiskirkland

To be more clear, i always use the HDD on my iMac or MacBook so it never touches a windows computer ever, and this one time i only plugged it in and this has happened

Reply

Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,069 points

Nov 21, 2013 10:38 AM in response to lewiskirkland

Does the drive mount on one of your Mac computers? Can you see it in Disk Utility? Do you have a 2nd external hard drive?

Reply

Answer 5

Nov 21, 2013 10:47 AM in response to lewiskirkland

I misunderstood, I thought you had copied the files from the Windows computer and tried to copy to the Mac.

What format was the disk in when you used in on the Mac, if HFS+ the Windows machine would ask to format it because Windows does not recognise Apple HFS+ formatted drives without special software.

Try Erics suggestions.

Reply