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keith-rs
05-14-2009, 05:55 PM
Hello,

I bought a new Seagate Free Agent Desk (1TB) external hard drive last month and have been using it for three weeks.

I've been using it as an external storage device. No disk backups. I'm using it with my Mac. My Mac is taken to repairs after a slight accident and I'm using my PC temporarily.

Problem is everything was working fine until I plugged it in to my PC. The PC doesn't recognize the external drive as a storage device and therefore does not show up as an icon when I view "My Computer." The PC however plays a notification sound like it does whenever I plug in and unplug any USB enabled device.

I want to access files from the external drive. Are there alternate methods I can access files from my PC? Are there compatibility issues? Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
-Keith
tehBoris
05-14-2009, 07:11 PM
The drive is probably formatted using HFS or HFS+ which Windows can't use. You could try some thing like HFSExplorer (http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html). Personally I'd just use Ubuntu as that can use HFS and HFS+ formatted partitions with little or no issue.
tokenuser
05-14-2009, 08:03 PM
The drive is probably formatted using HFS or HFS+ which Windows can't use. You could try some thing like HFSExplorer (http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html). Personally I'd just use Ubuntu as that can use HFS and HFS+ formatted partitions with little or no issue.That was my guess too. If I plan on sharing an external drive between machines, I generally format it as FAT32 for compatability. It sucks, but sometimes you just need to jit the lowest common denominator.

Antother options for access is MacDrive (http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/). It will cost you $50 for a full release though (trial verison is 5 day time limited).
computoman
05-14-2009, 09:07 PM
Some of the early models of that unit did have problems. I would go to the Seagate site and look for firmware updates. Which os is being used?
davmoo
05-15-2009, 03:28 AM
Before you possibly brick the drive updating firmware, I would also say check the drive format. Drive formatting is why there is a separate model of the Free Agent Desk specifically for Apples.
keith-rs
05-15-2009, 09:58 AM
Thanks, guys. :)

Unfortunately, the external drive requires reformatting if I want to do anything. :(

Even more bad news. My MacBook suffered a fried motherboard. Therefore, it'll cost me HK$8000 (1000USD) for repairs. :(

Anyway... once again, thanks everyone for the advice. :)

-Keith
tehBoris
05-15-2009, 12:39 PM
Have you tried HFSExplorer or booting a Ubuntu live disk?