Hard drive not detected in Disk Utility but appears in Windows disk management

[sswats]

Long story short -
Hard drive from old macbook. Put it in a caddy and plugged it into working macbook.
Doesn't come up in finder, but comes up in Disk utility but says I have to initialise.

I clicked yes, but i couldn't do anything, repair, partition etc.
Ejected it and plugged it back in and now it doesn't come up anywhere including Disk Utility.

When I plug it into a Windows PC it comes up in disk management but asks me to initialise.
I would try that but I remembered I needed to get 1 file off the hard drive ( I have mac file recovery software) and think initializing it in windows will screw my chances up totally.

any ideas?

 

[slinxy]

it could be a power issue on the hdd, I've had hdd that wont work in one system and works fine in another, yet the original system is fine with another hdd.

There are programs that will allow windows to read mac drives such as macdrive, I not used any, but a mate of mine has it installed on his bootcamp windows and uses it all the time.

Edit: its worth trying the hdd in another caddy or placing it in the original mac and using the mac in target disk mode.