Mac & Window Doesn't READ External HD

LuckySpin1

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Hello everyone, I'm new to this forums. I have encountered a problem and have been all over google reading on thread and SEAGATE help sites, but not luck. Problem is as follows...

My sisters got a new Seagate 2TB GoFlex and she transferred over pictures and videos from her WINDOWS 7 laptop. Then she connected the HD into her WINDOWS XP desktop, and the drive promoted to register the device. She is not computer sabby and she said all she did was complete a survey. After that she took it back to the laptop, and the laptop would not recognize it. It has a little light that will turn on.. You can hear the HD spinning, then it stops, and the light turns off. No luck, went into the USB ROOT, Drive Management, ect. Things around there. Followed steps that said right click on My Computer and go to Manage and so fourth... No luck... computer doesn't READ it at all. So i brought it over to my house and I have an iMac 27 running Snow Leopard. I connected it, and it won't pick it up.. I checked on Disk Utilities, and no luck. Googled like crazy and this is my last hope.. The one and most important question, "How can I recover all the data that was transferred over to the HD when no computer can read it?"

Any help is greatly appreciated thanks!
 
With external drives like that, it's usually the USB part of the enclosure that dies not the drive itself. Assuming it's not under warranty you can take the enclosure apart and put the drive in a new one, or mount it in a computer to read the data. If it is under warranty this will void it.

If it's still under warranty contact seagate to see if they can help.
 
When your computer won't boot (and assuming you haven't been backing your stuff up in the first place – which is a no! no!) you basically have two approaches to try and get to your personal data still on your hard drive. Remove your HD and connect it to a working computer. You can > Use a USB to PCI or SATA cable to connect the drive directly OR > Put the drive in an external USB enclosure and connect it using a USB cable OR Boot your computer from CD or flash drive (since you can't boot from HD). By using the right bootable CD or flash drive, you should be able to boot up your own machine and then often (but, of course, not always) be able to recover your files from your hard drive while it's still inside your own computer!
 
@celegorm Thanks for your reply we are actually taking the external HD back to best buy today.. my sister said that all the pictures and videos she put in there are still in her computer.. There was only some files that she was saving straight into the external. I don't know what best buy will try to do for us as far as retrieving the files... but if they don't its ok. Thanks for your fast response. :)

@rackmountsales - umm.. I wasn't trying to boot from an external.. and I can access all my computers hard drives... I was talking about an external HD that my computer won't read. If there was a way to be able to retrieve files from that.. I understand now that I would have to remove the hard drive from its enclosure but that would void warranty, so im just going to take it to best buy today. Thanks for the reply though.
 
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