Windows 7: wd usb hard drive from Mac to PC

I have a western digital USB hard drive model WD1200U017-001 that is now redundant from my wife's Mac Computer, where she had been using it on her "time machine" backup. I would now like to use it as an additional backup drive on my PC. However, when I plugged it in, my computer did not respond. The little blue light came on on the hard drive, but no response at all for my computer, and the drive was not visible when I clicked "start/computer". I am running windows 7 ultimate. My research on this hard drive indicates that it should work on a PC, so it is probably just a formatting problem. But how do I get it recognised in order to reformat it? Any ideas?
Robert

You have two options.

1) Find a Windows 7 driver that allows Windows to read/write Mac formatted hard disks

OR


2) If you have no data on there that you want to keep, you can re-partition and re-format the drive:

1. Click the Start Orb
2. Click "Control Panel"
3. Click "System and Security"
4. Click "Administrative Tools"
5. Double-click "Computer Management" (You may need to respond to UAC)
6. In the left pane, click "Disk Management"
7. In the center pane, in the bottom half, locate your drive. All the option you need to remove the existing volumes and partitions will be available in the right-click menu of you drive's graphical representation. Since I don't have a Mac drive here, I'm not entirely sure what the process from here on would be. But you'd generally need to first delete all existing partitions, then create new ones and format them. THIS WILL WIPE OUT ALL EXISTING DATA - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I still could not see the WD drive under "disk management". I then reconnected to a Mac, deleted all the FILES and tried re formatting to FAT 32, but my PC was still not interested in it. Re your first suggestion, I see a program called macdrive 8, but as I don't really want the versatility to use this on both computers, I would really prefer not to purchase that software. Any other suggestions? Thanks and regards, Robert

Just be warned that the Time Machine backup replaces any other data on the partition. In other words, if you try to store anything else there, it will stay only until she does another backup.

As for the connectivity problem, try using a different USB port.

Hello rattwater, welcome to Seven Forums!


Have you done a restart after the HDD is plugged in to see if Windows will recognize it?

I tried all those things, but to no effect. So I e-mailed the question off to western digital. They informed me that this drive is not supported by windows 7.!!$! End of story. Questioning closed. Thank you for your help any way.

Hummmm...that does not make sense. Have you tried it on an Windows XP machine. If it works there it will work on Windows 7. So far I have never come across a drive that worked on a MAC that did not work on a Windows Machine once it was re-partitioned and re-formatted.

That's non-sense. Hard drives are not built OS specific.

Zero the drive, then go back to the disk management tools and you'll see it: Active@ Kill Disk Hard Drive Eraser. Low Level Format.

Thanks for your further encouragement. I will persist. We must beat it. But before I download that Active@Kill… How will it be able to see the drive in order to do its thing if I can't see it even under Disk Managment? And I haven't yet tried it on an XP machine.

Because it's a dos app that doesn't rely on your operating system to tell it what hardware is present. If the drive is plugged in, turned on and recognized by your bios, it will show up.