External drive was readable , now unallocated?

[slave1]

Hi all,

The issue is simple but freaking me out since it involves tens of hours of work.

This morning I took my external drive with me to a colleague. It was working fine then. He is on MAC and we couldn't get it to see the drive, actually his computer would see the drive but couldn't access/read it, even after using tools made for this kind of situation.

i come back home, plug it in and the drive doesn't show up in My Computer. Disk Management sees it but tells me it is unallocated. Also, upon starting the Disk Management window it prompted me to "initializes the disk" by choosing either MBR or "sorry forgot the name of the second option. I chose MBR but it still stays there, unallocated.

What's going on?

 

[RealBeast]

Friends don't let friends use their external drives on MACs, j/k this kind of stuff is not unusual as the two have limited common files types.

I would install Recuva on your computer and see if that will allow you to access the files, they are all there but your file allocation table is messed up.

 

[slave1]

You got that right!

Right now I am running the EASEUS program and it is telling me, after running for 3 hours, that it has found 255 files.

It is kind of scary because I have tens of thousands of files on that drive, hopefully it will find all of them. Thanks for the heads up on Recuva, didn't know Piriform had a recovery program in their roster.

If that doesn't work any other suggestions?

 

[RealBeast]

The best program costs money, which is (IMO) Easeus Data Recovery -- but usually Recuva will get most of it all.

 

[slave1]

Well Recuva didn't even see the drive so there it goes.

Guess I will have to buy EASEUS then. Thanks!

 

[WyomingKnott]

And, unasked for advice, have at least two copies of anything that you really want. So if one dies, you still have the other. Backups, in other words.