I have a Lacie d2 Quadra 1tb External Hard Drive. I had it for years on a Mac. But unfortunately it bit the dust and I decided to get a PC. Now either because of time, corruption or because it may have been formatted for a Mac when I plug it into my PC I cant access it. I can find it under Device Manager and Disk Management but that's it.

But the PC does see the shortcut button when I plug it in I get a notice saying it sees it. So I have come here to this community of bright individuals to seek guidance. I know very little about reformatting (possible nothing) so I don't want to mess it up. So here are my two question: 1. After reformatting will I get all of the 1tb of space I had before? How do I do it.

The drive should say unallocated; Note: If it does not you will need to right-click and delete the volume first. If the external hard drive is pre formatted for Mac, Disk Management will list 3 partitions and you will not be able to delete the 'Health (EFI System Partition)' because it's a protected partition. Dec 08, 2009  i have a 320GB simple tech external hard drive that i used for my mac book pro. My mac book pro broke down completely so i bought an Asus laptop which runs Windows 7. I go to plug in the external hard drive, however i cant access it.

I would like to thank everyone for their assistance.

One option is to back up your old Windows external drive (using ). Reformat the drive using Apple's Disk Utility software and the company's HFS+ file system instead. Then you can restore the backed up data to the drive. Even if the backed up and restored files originally came from a PC, they'll be stored on the drive using a file system the Mac fully understands. That way the drive will be fully Mac-compatible without any need for you to modify the operating system of the Mac to get it to work properly. Obviously that solution doesn't work for everyone. Maybe the drive you're using has to be used with a PC occasionally.

Whatever the case, the good news is that it's not a show-stopper: There are a few utilities out there that will enable Macs to write to mounted NTFS volumes. Tuxera's is one of the best ways to do it.

The quick scan quickly checks for lost files whereas the detailed scan thoroughly checks for files in the selected partition. The installation process is quite easy in few steps you can install the application to run scan. This software supports FAT12/16/32, NTFS & NTFS5 file systems and removable devices. The first step towards data recovery is to select the drive from which you want to recover lost files. There are two types of scanning modes are available one is Fast Scan and second is Detailed Scan.

It uses smart caching to keep data transfer as fast as possible and works with every OS X version since 10.4 (Tiger). NTFS for Mac costs $31, and you can download a demo first to see how it does. Paragon Software's is another excellent choice. It includes several additional utilities for people who need to tinker or repair, to enable you to format drives with NTFS, check NTFS partition integrity, fix errors, and more.

NTFS for Mac costs $19.95. If you're a DIYer and you'd like to go the free route, you'll find a Sourceforge project called that gets the job done. NativeNTFS isn't for rookies: It's a bash script that needs to run from the Terminal command line and requires you to have root (administrator) access to your computer. An easier way to go is to download, a third-party software tool that extends the Mac's file system capabilities.

Follow the directions on the OS X Fuse website to download and configure the software. Follow the instructions to download, whose development seems stopped right now but still works in Yosemite. Once OS X Fuse and NTFS-3G are installed, your Mac should be able to read and write to NTFS disks just fine.