Question about Mac and Windows disk formats

[x5x3]

I have a 1Tb disk I use on my Mac to store old downloads and similar things, so nothing critical but useful.

One of the kids managed to try to open one of these files on a PC and I think he said yes to initialising it!

Now I cannot read it on either Mac or PC, so a bit stuck - anyone have any good ideas?

[PJ S]

x5x3 said:

I have a 1Tb disk I use on my Mac to store old downloads and similar things, so nothing critical but useful.

One of the kids managed to try to open one of these files on a PC and I think he said yes to initialising it!

Now I cannot read it on either Mac or PC, so a bit stuck - anyone have any good ideas?

Can't read it, meaning it doesn't mount on either desktop?
Did the kid panic and unplug it from the PC while it was doing the process he OK'd?
More to the point, I've never came across Windows asking to initial a drive when trying to open an unknown file type!
I'd try booting from Windows OS disc with the drive installed in one of the bays, and then select it for formatting.
How had you it formatted before - FAT32 or NTFS?

[fluffnik]

You quite probably need PhotoRec from the TestDisk utilities and sufficient free space to dump the recovered data.

It's completely non-destructive so it won't make things worse but you will lose your file's names.

I'm not up to speed on Mac filesystems but it would not surprise me if you can't fully recover the more unixy ones from duplicate superblocks within the volume...

Best of luck!

[fluffnik]

PJ S said:

How had you it formatted before - FAT32 or NTFS?

Won't be either on a Mac...

[PJ S]

FAT32 [MS-DOS (FAT)] is a format within Disk Utility for the very purpose of connecting a swapped external drive between OSes.
NTFS can be read but not written without an app whose name escapes me.
So both are valid formats for OS X to work with.

Edited by PJ S on Wednesday 5th January 14:53

[LOGiK]

at a guess, the drive has now been marked as inactive.

I don't use macs really, but I know an inactive partition on windows wont be displayed. You'll need to go into disk manager to see if the drive is detected or not and such.

Additionally, he may have wiped the data on the drive. Be prepared for that possibility.

[x5x3]

thanks all for the replies, I will take a look at the disk utility.

It is not the end of the world if we lose the disk, everything important is on the time capsule, I sort of used this one as an extra backup so if Ii have to reformat and re-copy then it is a small pain but nothing more.

I spoke with my son again and I am less sure now what exactly happened to the disk - it may well have been me after all

I do know for sure that it is not working now though on either Mac or PC!