undetectable hard drive

Hi. I hope someone here can help me out. My girlfriend has a powerbook, G4 OS x10.4 & a macbook G5 OS X 10.5.8 Plus a 500g Maxtor external hard drive. The problem we have is that neither laptop will recognise the external drive. The drive will power up and spin, it shows up in System Profiler but there is no desktop icon or icon in the My
Computer window. Neither of us know how Macs work so could someone please tell me how to access this drive.
Many thanks.

Can Disk Utility find it?

is the Maxtor external HDD formatted FAT32?

If it's Windows NTFS that could be the problem...although Mac OS X 10.3 and later should at least read it.

Edited by 4M2 (Sat 22-Sep-12 17:14:27)

I seem to remember it never worked on my windows pc so I guess it is Mac whatever. Journal is it?

Hi. Yes, finally found disk utility and, yes, the disk is there. Ive never used this utility so any advice? Many thanks

Worth running the First Aid options - go straight to repair rather than checking first.

Then reformat as HFS+ (Journaled) - don't go case sensitive.

See what happens...

(I am assuming there is nothing on the drive obv).

Do you have show External disks selected in Finder Preferences?

screenshot

Thanks.
I ran repair but I got an 'invalid node structure', filesystem repair failed.
There is data on the drive but given the above error Im guessing it is all lost and a reformat, if possible, is the only option?
Cheers

Hmm. Doesn't look good

Have a look here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070204... (note that these assume it is the boot disk causing issues - you don't need to, obv)

Also, if you don't already own it, get a copy of Disk Warrior - is worth every penny and might just salvage your data.

Thanks. I didnt know about that but yes, it is ticked.
Cheers

Thank you to everyone who offered a suggestion to help, especially Ian_c. Disk Warrior did indeed work and I have managed to pull all my files off the drive. Yippee!! Disk warrior suggests it was a disk malfunction so I will be ditching the drive.
Many thanks

Glad it is sorted - Disk Warrior is an outstanding piece of kit and every Mac owner should have it.

Since Disk Utility can not see the drive how can I reformat it? I cant see any option in Disk Warrior to do it. Any idea?
Thanks

Sorry - I had misunderstood. I thought it was disk utility that had said it could not be repaired (Disk Warrior can often fix things that DU can't).

If it is not showing up in disk utility and Disk Warrior has let you rescue your data, then it sounds like the drive is kaput and you might as well ditch it

In reply to a post by ian_c:

If it is not showing up in disk utility and Disk Warrior has let you rescue your data, then it sounds like the drive is kaput and you might as well ditch it

Might perhaps be able to format the drive FAT32 with a Windows machine, before ditching it?

No, my fault. Yes Disk Utility does see the drive but I cant perform any action on it, hence the success of disk Warrior to get the info off it. I had hoped to delete all data before ditching the drive but I cant see how. If I can use Warrior to get data then so could someone else. Maybe Im being over paranoid!

sadly I cant get a pc to see the drive as accessible, though that was the same with the mac before disk warrior, so maybe if I play with some software.
cheers

If you are really worried about others getting data off the disc then physically destroy it first with a hammer.

Hmm. Might be worth get DW to repair permissions.

Does the partition tab in DU work (you have to select the whole disk, not just volumes)?

Or as Dick says, the old Birmingham Screwdriver treatment....

Edited by ian_c (Mon 24-Sep-12 16:01:26)

In reply to a post by matty_hunt:

sadly I cant get a pc to see the drive as accessible...

Not even from Start > My Computer > right click > Manage > Disk Management?

Thanks. Initially the partition tab appeared, now its not showing, even disk warrior isnt finding the disk now so its definitely knackered.
After all the time spent on it Im going to enjoy dismantling it!
Thanks for all your help. You saved my files! Cheers.

Guys, thanks for all your help. The disc is faulty. Now sometimes the drive shows, though not accessable, sometimes not. A couple of times now it has appeared then disappeared of the desktop. Im going to have a play and dismantle it.
Thanks again.