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    tenille.bentley's Avatar
    tenille.bentley Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
    New Member
     
    #1

    Mar 2, 2010, 05:47 PM
    External Hard Drive won't assign a volume
    Hi There
    I have tried everything and searched many websites but can't find an answer to my question.
    I have a external Hard Drive, that I have successfully used every day, I took it home and had to format it and then put new info on it. When I brought it back to work, it would not automatically pick up the drive.
    So I went into computer management, and the drive is recognised there, but has no volume assigned.
    It won't let me assign a volume, as the options are all greyed out.

    It's almost like it is recognised (reads Healthy, Active, Primary Partition) but just won't come up on my computer so I can access the files.

    I have done shut downs and reboots, tried different USB's and tested it on other computers (my home computer which is a mac), works fine.
    This computer is a Vista. However worked perfectly before I took it home and reformatted it emptied the contents and put new info on it.

    Anyone out there - can you help?
    WallyHelps's Avatar
    WallyHelps Posts: 1,018, Reputation: 136
    Ultra Member
     
    #2

    Mar 3, 2010, 06:47 AM

    Most likely is that when you formatted it on the Mac, you used the default (Mac-only) HFS+ format. This won't be accessible on Windows PCs.

    Here is a good article on how to format the disk to make it usable on both the Mac and PC.

    I hope this helps clear things up,
    WallyH

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