Okay, here my problem: I have thousands of pics on a Seagate external hard drive. It was formatted to a dell laptop that was broken. Every time I try to hook it up to another one it says it needs to format. WILL REFORMATTING IT DELETE MY PICS?? These are irreplaceable pics of my little ones... also we have the ram cards from the other laptop... anything to get those pics back... thanks!!

Irreplaceable pictures need a more secure backup. You can take it to a specalist to recover it. I am not sure what your technology level is like so some of the things I would suggest might not work. Have you tried different computers? Maybe with different operating systems?

What is going on here can be likened to a library and card catalogue system. Every book is a file and it is reference by the card catalogue, telling you where everything is. What has happened is that your card catalogue, I assume, has been played around with, either someone has spilled the cards to the floor or burned them or what.

I found this on the Seagate site,

Seagate File Recovery - recover Files from Seagate External Hard Drive (http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/seagate-external-drive-data-recovery.html)

Formatting a hard disk drive (HDD) means everything is erased. Are you sure the external HDD was formatted (erased, wiped)? If you really are saying your external HDD was connected or installed into another computer, that is different situation. Are you saying that the other computer cannot "read" (aka see, mount, access, map) your external HDD. If you did what is called a "quick format", then perhaps some of your photo files are still recoverable. But sounds like you do not have the technical skills to do this. In either case, you should take HDD to professional computer store and seek their help. In the future a save method to store/save any files simply copy them to CD/DVD. CD/DVD are cheap and relatively indestructible.

PS - If you connected/installed your HDD to a functioning Windows computer (running any Windows (DOS)), if a physically attached HDD cannot be read/seen/accessed, the problem may be a that a "Drive Letter" must be assigned to that HDD. A Letter label (D thru Z) MUST be assigned before Windows DOS can read/access it. But of course the functioning computer must first be properly running Windows. To assign a drive letter you may still need more technical skills, but at least that process is relatively simple and quick. Go to computer store for help.

What type of connection are you using with the external drive? USB or Firewire or something else (like aSATA) ? Also do you know what OS was on the Dell laptop ? XP, Win2000, Vista etc ?

Yes I know I had them on disks but got lost in a move. What kind of specialist would I need. Don't want a kid from best buy permanently deleting them.

It is usb connection. Was Vista now current ones are Windows 8.

Basically what I need is to get it upload the pics from the hard drive to new computer. It was on Vista now Windows 8. Tech skills are nonexistent.

A long-shot, but see if there is a local computer club. For example, in Kentucky there is the Central Kentucky Computer Society (http://ckcs.org).
There are people there who know what to do and enjoy doing it.

There is an organization called APCUG (http://apcug2.org/), which is the Association of Technology & Computer User Groups that has a search feature (http://apcug2.org/content/find-user-group) for such clubs. Hopefully there will be one in your area.

Good luck!
WallyH

Do you have a friend that is using windows vista or windows 7? They could plug it in and see if it reads on their machine.