Lacie ext HD issue

  • Thread starter Thread starter Yv
  • Start date Start date
Yv

Yv

TPer Emerita
Messages
25,725
Name
Yvonne, pronounced Eve...
Edit My Images
Yes
Hello technical people, I need some advice please :)


I have a Lacie external HD that I bought when my Windows 64bit desktop machine was my main processing machine. Plugged it, followed the instructions to make it useable and backed up a load of photos to it. No problem. I was a bit surprised that it seemed to have its own 'operating partition', all the drives I have ever bought have been much more straightforward.

However, nearly ago I bought an iMac and when I plugged it into that, it insisted that it wanted formatting before I could use it. Now I naively assumed this was something to do with mac and windows using different file formats, so left it as it was, choosing only to use it on the desktop. The problem is that I am now considering moving the desktop to our business office, so wont have it at home so I tried plugging the drive into a windows laptop to make sure I could use it and same thing, it insists it needs to be formatted. It works perfectly well on the desktop I should add :shrug:

So, the windows pc now has a clean spare internal drive, if I copy everything from the Lacie onto it - what are my options for then making the Lacie usable on any computer? Can it be done, or is it hard wired into it that it has to be one machine only? I don't recall it offering me any options when I first installed it, though it may have done and I missed it. It has over 300GB of images on it, so I don't want to try anything until the stuff is copied but wondered if any of you guys have come across this problem before and have some answers? :thinking:
 
interesting.. if it works in 1 windows machine it should work in another.

can you tell me....

1 - if you right click the drive in my computer and go to properties, what "file system" is the drive?
2 - what version of windows are on both boxes?
 
Yup, that's basically the problem. Once its finished backing up I am going to try it on an XP laptop, see what happens there, but I am fairly sure drive letters were assigned on the W7 machine :thinking:

We shall see, get it backed up first.

Oh, is there anyway of checking similar issues on macs? I mean basically over riding its desire to format with any of the disk management tools in OS X do you know?
 
if it did assign a drive letter i wonder if the format message is just for that opperating partition you described..

in disk management on the W7 machine have a look and see what file system each partition has.

its been a while since i swapped external drives around on OSX but i dont recall it ever prompting to format disks, i think you dont get anything like that until youre in disk utilities?
 
hmmm, thinking about it, it assigned a letter to the operating partition, but not the storage bit, I just couldn't see it anywhere on windows machine - on mac it just wasn't recognised in finder so opened disk utility and got the format window pop up - its own software I mean, not anything on the mac.....so perhaps that's the issue...so lets assume for now I can resolve it by assigning a letter in disk management on windows, it still leaves me with a drive I can't use on both mac and pc...

so, finish backing up, then try again on W7 machine and try to get it sorted via disk management. Then buy another drive that will work on both [FAT file system to read and write iirc?] and keep this one as the 'stored in the fireproof safe at work' disc perhaps?
 
shouldnt be any need to buy another drive, if you need to reformat anyway just format as FAT32 (will have a maximum single file size limit of 4GB). alternatively stay with NTFS (more secure, journalled etc) and you can get an app for the mac that lets you write to it.

i think the quickest solution would be to back up all of the data then on the W7 machine in disk management delete all partitions on the lacie and recreate letting W7 format.
 
Modern LaCie drives will check what OS you are using and then format the drive for that. That's probably what that partition is for. I wonder if that it is now seeing a Mac it's deciding it needs to reformat to HFS+. A bit strange as Macs should be able to read to NTFS formated disks , although no write to them straight off.

I've got two LaCie drives, one which was formatted on a PC to NTFS and works fine on the Mac using NTFS for Mac
Try downloading a trial copy of NTFS for Mac, from the Paragon web site and see if this helps. The trial I think is valid for for 10 days. If it works you can simply but a serial No to continue using it ( about £25 ).
 
Phew, sorry guys, an hour long phone call later.... I will wait until its finished, then plug into the various machines and see what happens, taking screen shots of anything I can't sort out. :thumbs:

Thankyou, at least I don't feel like I am going mad or being particularly stupid now ... well, no more then usual anyway :lol:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top