windows 7 won't see my mac formatted external HD

[Koharski]

Hey guys, last weekend I visited a friend of mine and spent some time skiing. Since he was having problems with his mac, I helped him reformat it.

To back up his files, I used my external HD after formatting it to the mac file system. Before I left he put a bunch of photos from our trip on there.

now that I have brought the harddrive back to my house, I cannot see it on my PC. I have downloaded the trial of "mac drive" to read it, however the external HD does not even show up in explorer. When in disk manager, all I see are my two internal drives.

I don't mind reformatting, but I need to copy all the data off the drive first. How can I get windows 7 to detect the drive so that I can open it in mac drive?

 

[mv2devnull]

I would try some Linux Live distro in hope that it can understand both Mac and Windows filesystems.

 

[tnt118]

I'm surprised to hear that MacDrive isn't working. I've successfully used it in the past for the exact thing you are trying to do. A quick search shows that's the most recommended program. I'd think that maybe with a little tinkering you might get it working.

A quick search also turned up http://www.catacombae.org/hfsx.html -- looks like it will read the drive and let you "extract" the files to your PC drive for use. I've never tried it before so I can't vouch for the program.

Edit: I'm only passingly familiar with drive formatting on the mac. Do you remember how exactly it was formatted? That it doesn't show up at all in management leads me to believe there might be a bigger problem than just the file system. Do you have access to a mac computer anywhere to try it there?

I didn't read it yet, but check out this information from the MacDrive people about not being able to see a drive under Windows:

http://support.mediafour.com/entries/170461-macdrive-mac-disk-not-seen-by-windows-no-drive-letter