External USB HDD issue

Kemik

Kemik

Kemik

Soldato
Joined
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Hello,

I wanted to use timemachine with my Mac but it wouldn't show in Finder or the desktop when I plugged it in. I rang Apple Care and they said I need to format it as I've used it with Windows in the past. So, I decided to backup my data on to my windows desktop machine.

After doing most of the important data explorer crashed. However, when recopying the data after the crash (to ensure against data loss) my RAID controller program told me the RAID was degraded. I thought "hey, I'll rebuild the RAID. Worst thing that would happen is I lose the data I've already copied and Ill just copy it again." Wrong. For some reason the Intel RAID program decided my eSata/USB2 Caddie (IcyBox) should be part of the RAID too and that's why its degraded. As soon as I pressed repair the external hard drive disappeared. I couldn't cancel the repair so I shut down my computer and turned off the external harddrive.

Now if I start my PC and attempt to use the external HDD the RAID controller will try and rebuild it with the external HDD. I've tried using a third computer to copy my data to but it doesn't see the HDD (using USB instead of eSATA this time). It says there is a USB storage device but the status in dis management shows "Unreadable".

I cannot simply reformat the drive because the Mac doesn't see it in the Disk utility and disk management only lets me see the properties. There is no format or usual hard drive options.

Any idea what I can do? My priority is to recover the movies/music from the hard drive but if I have to I'll just reformat it. I've tried a data recovery program but it just shows the one physical drive and no external drives.
 
Ok, hang on a minute while I get this straight. You have an external drive which you want to use with a Mac, but that drive needs formatted in something other than NTFS so that the Mac can read it?

Now somehow along the line you've managed to get it to be part of a RAID array on a PC?


At this point I'd say that the content on the external drive is pretty much gone since it's been partially overwritten by the RAID rebuild process. You might get some back with a data recovery tool but that's by no means guaranteed. You'll need to get it out of the RAID array before anything will recognise it though.
 
That's about it stewart. I just thought explorer had screwed up when it crashed and hence the RAID needed rebuilding when the Intel RAID tool poped up and told me it had been degraded.

So you think I should start the PC with the external hard drive attached (eSata) and try and remove it from the array?

Edit: I see what went wrong. The hard drive on port 1 isn't showing up. Gonna try moving it to another port so I an rebuild the original array.
 
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Ok, I've removed it from RAID, recovered the data I needed and reformated it to NTFS.

It shows up fine in Vista if connected via eSata and when connecting via USB a popup appears saying USB mass storage device ready to be used but it isn't shown in My Computer. Disk Management says it's "unreadable".

Do you think this could be a faulty USB cable, incompatible drivers or a dodgey USB port on the caddie? I've tried the caddie on another Vista computer and it has the same problem.
 
If I remember correctly, some version of vista wont read "external" dynamic disks, which is why its working under e-sata (as it can still be classed as "internal") and not working via USB.

If you dont have any data on it, which I presume you dont if you formatted it, you just need to delete the volume and create a new basic disk volume.

Actually, just looking in comp management, if I right click on the grey box next to the drive with "Disk 0/1/2/3 etc" in, I can "convert to dynamic disk", so perhaps you can convert to basic disk? Although I think if you do you would lose any data on it but I am not 100% sure.
 
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Fixed. The brainiacs at Icy Box thought it would be a great idea to make it so that you need to open up the case and switch the port the hard drive is attached to on the "mini motherboard" before you can use USB. If I want to use eSata, I need to open it up again and switch the port back.

Stupid. I may just buy a NAS.
 
Ah. I forgot about that - my bro's icy box is the same. Its only the older models that you need to do that with.
 
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