Can anybody help me? My laptop (acer, windows 7) won’t let me access the files my portable hard drive (using explorer). It does, however, register its presense in control panel- I can see its properties etc. It’s a Maxtor Basics hard drive.

When you say it “won’t let you,” what actually happens?

Have you got another PC you can try it on?

did you set it up from another account and set it as not to be shared

*imagines IT people all over the country laughing at stoopid suggestion*

🙁

Silly question, but are you sure there’s something on it?

It works on an old Apple laptop.
Yes, there’s def still stuff in there- which is annoying, otherwise I’d be able it re-initialise it and maybe that would fix the problem! 🙂

Speaking of which, I’ve looked at it in device manager and it does say that it appears to say that it isn’t initialised. Hmm.

Right-click, properties, tools, check disk.

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

When you say it “won’t let you,” what actually happens?

Hi Cougar, not sure if I can right click on it to get to the tools option- the hard drive only shows up in control panel and computer/disk management (I might be missing something here!)

When I right click using control panel I get a ‘troubleshoot’ option, which I’ve tried but it says ‘couldn’t identify the problem’

However, in disk management it says ‘not initialized’…

USB voltage too low? I have had this problem on one of my work laptops. Out of 3 USB ports the hd was only recognised on one. Made a simple breakout box as I was bored and found the voltage was way down on the two the hard disc did not work in. Small chance it could be this but I assume you have tried all USB ports.

In disk management ensure it has a unique drive letter assigned to it if not change it to one that is.

In disk management ensure it has a unique drive letter assigned to it if not change it to one that is.

This sounds promising- how do I do this? I can’t see anything obvious…

Did you format the drive on your Mac/What format is the external hard drive using ?

I’m pretty it was formatted on a Mac. How do I found out which format it is? I’ve also noticed that it is saying that it is ‘unallocated’

USB voltage too low? I have had this problem on one of my work laptops. Out of 3 USB ports the hd was only recognised on one. Made a simple breakout box as I was bored and found the voltage was way down on the two the hard disc did not work in. Small chance it could be this but I assume you have tried all USB ports.

It has two seperate USB cables- one of which says ‘power’. Is it worth plugging this one into a 12v Apple charger? Or will this melt my hard drive?

I don’t do Macs, but it is probably formatted in HFS(+).

Read more about it here:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3369574/how-read-mac-os-hfs-drives-in-windows-for-free/

NOTE:I’ve not tried their solution, it was the first google result that seemed useful

disk management

I just plugged it into my Mac to see what the format is, it says ‘Mac OS extended (journaled), if that makes any sense to anyone…

Then my link should see you right.

What I’d do is,

Get the data off it using your Mac. Re-format it using the exFAT format. Put the data back on. It’ll work in anything then.

DO NOT initialise the disk using Windows disk management, or you’ll lose all the data.

But of course, you’ve got all that data backed up, right?