Computer won't recognise second external harddrive

Hi,

I've got an HP laptop with 3 USB ports and a WD Elements 1TB external harddrive which I've been using for a while now. I just bought a second WD Elements 1TB drive which I had shipped from the store to someone else to load some files on and then that person shipped it to me. However when I plug the new hd into one of my computer's USB ports the computer won't recognise it under My Computer, even when I unplug the 1st (old) hd and plug the 2nd (new) hd into the same USB port currently being used by the 1st. The person who loaded the files said they had a Mac so I don't know if the harddrive initialized to a Mac or what, or if something like that's even possible.

I've tried the following steps and it showed the hd was online, so I don't know what else to do. Also they both show up under 'Devices and Printers', the 2nd just won't show up under My Computer where it can be accessed. Any help would be very appreciated, thanks.

http://stx.lithium.com/t5/FreeAgent...ize-2-seagate-external-hard-drives/td-p/45982
http://www.crazybulb.com/troubleshoot/multiple-passports-signature-collision-resolved/

 

Crap, I just called WD technical support and they said it was because the other guy had a Mac so it would be possible to reformat the drive to NTFS but I would lose all the data. Anybody got any ideas on how to save this data? It was the only reason I got the drive in the first place!

Can I run a virtual Mac on my pc and burn the data to a CD-RW and slowly transfer the data to my other hard drive?

 

What you need is a program called MacDrive. It's not free, but you'll be able to read and write to the drive as if it were formatted for a PC? Google for it.

 

Go into Disk Management and see what format the drive is in. Start>Run>type in DISKMGMT.MSC

Let us know as I thought externals were formatted to FAT32 for ease of use in MAC or Windows.

 

I'm using HFSExplorer right now and it seems to be working, macdrive was also a good option but I didn't know if there would be restrictions on the free trial. It says that DISKMGMT.MSC isn't recognised, maybe it's called something different in Win7? After I'm done transferring the files I'll look that up for interest's sake though. Thanks again.

 

I'm not sure why diskmgmt.msc doesn't work in your Win7--it works fine on mine. You could try just typing disk management in the search box and get to it that way. It looks like it will say HFSe as the format type.

I realize now that I am at least 5 years behind on Mac formatting. You and abekl have found the best solution to read the partition. Good work!