External Hard Drive has Data but isn't Formatted to PC or Mac

[gallaghermichael]

Hey all,
So I'm in the process of switching files from my family's mac to my laptop. We have an external Seagate 1TB drive that has a bunch of my stuff on it. It's formatted for Mac but I thought it was also able to switch to PC as well (didn't do research and this is in fact not true) so I go to plug the drive in to my PC and a window pops up with a loading bar that looks like its initializing the hard drive. Then it stops and I can't access the drive anywhere on the computer, it just doesn't show. Frustrated I go back to the family Mac, plug in the drive, and it says I have to partition it! What happened? When I look at the drive on the Mac it now says that total capacity is 1TB, does that mean when I plugged it into the PC it wiped all the data? I would really like to recover the files if possible, any help or guidance is really appreciated!

 

[DR_Luke]

You are best to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive before doing anything. But, assuming that the issue is only logical and there are no physical problems with the drive, you can try to see if you can find the file with a data recovery program. I like R-Studio (https://www.recoveryforce.com/r-studio) because it is simple, fast and can handle both Windows and Mac file systems. The demo is free, which will allow you to confirm that you can find your files. If it goes smoothly and you see what you want, you can pay the fee for the license or look for another program that might be cheaper.

 

[gallaghermichael]

You are best to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive before doing anything. But, assuming that the issue is only logical and there are no physical problems with the drive, you can try to see if you can find the file with a data recovery program. I like R-Studio (https://www.recoveryforce.com/r-studio) because it is simple, fast and can handle both Windows and Mac file systems. The demo is free, which will allow you to confirm that you can find your files. If it goes smoothly and you see what you want, you can pay the fee for the license or look for another program that might be cheaper.

Thank you for your suggestion! I downloaded the demo and I'm scanning the drive now. If it appears that the files are intact, you said I should get a sector-by-sector clone of the drive? What does that do and how I could I do that?
Thank you for your help and time, I really appreciate it!

 

[DR_Luke]

Thank you for your suggestion! I downloaded the demo and I'm scanning the drive now. If it appears that the files are intact, you said I should get a sector-by-sector clone of the drive? What does that do and how I could I do that?
Thank you for your help and time, I really appreciate it!

The purpose of getting a clone of the drive is so you can set the original aside and work with the copy, just in case you make a mistake and accidentally write back to the drive. When recovering the files, be sure that you copy them out to another drive and not back to the drive from which you are recovering. In fact, don't write anything at all back to that drive until you are 100% sure that you have recovered all your files and are completely satisfied with the result.

 

[gallaghermichael]

Thank you for your suggestion! I downloaded the demo and I'm scanning the drive now. If it appears that the files are intact, you said I should get a sector-by-sector clone of the drive? What does that do and how I could I do that?
Thank you for your help and time, I really appreciate it!

The purpose of getting a clone of the drive is so you can set the original aside and work with the copy, just in case you make a mistake and accidentally write back to the drive. When recovering the files, be sure that you copy them out to another drive and not back to the drive from which you are recovering. In fact, don't write anything at all back to that drive until you are 100% sure that you have recovered all your files and are completely satisfied with the result.

Ok great thank you so much!