ScottRAnderson1
asked on
Recovering dat from a Fat32 drive used in Mac 9.2
I have a Seagate External 400gig Drive that connects to a Dual 2.7 Mac via USB 2.0. The drive was left as a Fat 32 - it worked out of the box and I now realize from Seagate that I should have formatted for the MAC. Anyway, drive was working fine until I hooked it up to another MAC in with System 9.2. The computer rebuilt the desktop when it was hooked up but it read all the files so I wasn't concerned. I was actually trying to get some larger video files off of this MAC and when the drive message said 49 hours for transfer I decided to unhook and use the Firewire connection. When I hooked up the Firewire cord it would not recognize the drive. I went back to the original MAC and rehooked up the drive as it was when it was working and it would not recognize - asked for initializing or eject. I also hooked it up to a Sony Tower with the latest XP Pro and it also asked to format. I noticed this statement from an older posting on a similar problem (pasted below). Can someone explain? Is this what I need to do? If so, can someone explain this to a "nonprogrammer"? If not, what should be my next step? Thanks - Scott
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21060119/Recovery-data-from-non-working-fat32-external-firewire-drive.html?query=External+Drive+recovery&clearTAFilter=true
Comment from clinthammer
Date: 07/15/2004 01:18PM PDT
Author Comment
Fixed it. Used testdisk - emailed log to author. He told me this:
Boot sector has been destroyed.
Go in Advanced, Boot, choose BackupBS, Quit and reboot your computer.
If you are lucky, you will be able to access your data again.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21060119/Recovery-data-from-non-working-fat32-external-firewire-drive.html?query=External+Drive+recovery&clearTAFilter=true
Comment from clinthammer
Date: 07/15/2004 01:18PM PDT
Author Comment
Fixed it. Used testdisk - emailed log to author. He told me this:
Boot sector has been destroyed.
Go in Advanced, Boot, choose BackupBS, Quit and reboot your computer.
If you are lucky, you will be able to access your data again.
SOLUTION
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juanfermin
Same with File Scavenger posted above, I've used it before and was able to restore 50 gigs of Data from a completely fried 70 Gig Disk, so I know it's a winner.
ASKER
I'm currently running File Scavanger - the drive is 400 gig with about 100gig of files. It's at 70% scan. I'll update if it works.
ASKER
I started with "file scavanger" but it only recovered 5.7 gig of 200 gig. with no file names. I didn't know there was 200g on the drive until I ran getdataback. When I used "getdataback" it pulled at least 90% of the files off of the drive - with file names. I needed the names to be there for the linking to work. The main folder names were not maintained but everything inside them had the appropriate titles. I am still copying the files off so I won't know for sure what ones have not recovered but the ones I do need are opening well within the MAC environment. The biggest thing I pulled from this experience is knowing to format new drives on the MAC side - even if they are readable out of the box. The fat32 format is not stable for the MAC OS and Seagate recommends doing this as the first step before using. It actually ran quite well until I tried the Firewire port instead of the USB 2. THNKAS AGAIN!!! for the quick responses- Scott