Getting External Hard Drive to Work

I have a Mac, but it's on it's last legs. I got an external harddrive (passport something or the other) and put all the stuff from the Mac onto it. I want to access these files on my Windows 7 Home Premium computer. I plugged the device in, the computer made a noise and installed a driver for it. Problem is, it isn't showing up in the file menu. I researched a bit and learned I needed to initialize the disk. I tried to follow the steps to do so, but in the Disk Manager, which I click, "initialize disk" isn't an option. What do I do?

Okay, I managed to get the disk recognized as G, but it's saying I have to format it before I can use it. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? How can I access all my stuff?

How to transfer files from a Mac to Windows? - Crowdsourcing Questions & Answers

Re: MAC to PC Transfer - Seagate Community Forums

In essence, having both as part of the same network is the easiest.

Otherwise, software is required as suggested in the second hyperlink.