In HORRIBLY DESPERATE need of help with external hard drive issue - Last resort PLEASE help

[dwhits90]

 

I've never posted in a forum like this before, but I have total faith in the people on here. There will be UNENDING appreciation for anyone that can help me out at all.

 

So I have a huge issue going on right now. Basically I cannot get my external hard drive working, which is a huge problem seeing as I cannot apply to graduate school for architecture without the documents on there. I would GREATLY appreciate any help. (Note - I'm not hugely knowledgeable about a lot of the backend tech stuff on computers but am a very fast learner and have a VERY solid grip on how to use macs).

 

Here's the story:

 

I have a 1TB WD external hard drive. I gave it a FAT32 partition so I could transfer documents between my MAC and my PC in my architecture studio. The hard drive was working fine for a while and then last week, I noticed that it gave me an error message saying that I could read documents on the hard drive but I would not be able to copy new documents to the hard drive. Then, the next time I plugged the hard drive into my computer, I got an error message telling me that "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." And I haven't been able to get it to work since. I opened disk utility and the partition's name has changed to disk2s1 from it's original name. Also, disk utility is unable to repair the disk.

 

I downloaded and paid for Stellar Phoenix. It ran for a week and was able to recover some of the files (so I KNOW the files are still there) but I know it didn't even BEGIN to scan the depths of my hard drive because it appeared to freeze at about 5% of the way through the scan (at least I think it was frozen because it was monitoring the same sector for 2 days) and I stopped the scan and recovered some of the files it had detected. These files were recovered to the 2 TB G-Technology hard drive that I have since purchased at the apple store. I then purchased DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior gave me an error message that read:

Directory cannot be rebuilt, the file system is unsupported.

This disk is not a Macintosh disk.

This disk does not appear on the desktop.

This disk is 1 TB in size.

Disk ID: disk2s1

Sectors: 1,953,458,174 (512 Bytes each)

Drive Format: FDisk Partition Scheme

File System: MS-DOS/PC

Model: WD

 

I cannot for the life of me figure out what this FDisk Partition Scheme means. I used a mac to partition the drive and to prove it, the hard drive was working on the Mac. It's almost as if suddenly, something changed the drive format.

 

After doing extensive searches online, it appears my problem is SIMILAR to this post ->http://forum.voodoop...hp?topic=1593.0

The poster was able to solve the issue, but I don't have the technical understanding to figure out what he did. I attached an image of what the terminal says when I list the drives.

 

If there is ANYONE out there that is willing to help me out, I would truly be endlessly appreciative. This is really an incredibly serious problem for me, and I'm really just ready for this issue to be done with, but I don't want to spend any more money on it, especially if it's something that can be fixed without spending money and I just don't know how to do it.

[theconnactic]

Hey, man! Don't panic (yet).

 

Check this post: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/231025-i-lost-my-guid-paritition-label-to-fdisk/ and ask help there (you'll have to answer to the second quiz to be able to post anywhere on Insanelymac).

 

Good luck and welcome!

[dwhits90]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll head over there right now!

[lo90renzo]

I had a similar problem with an internal 2 tb wd, fat 32 fotmatted to be readable from pc and mac. The only Way to get the data back was connecting my hd to a ubuntu system. I dont know how but it worked. Good luck! Let us know.