Tech Geek Needed!

[JonathanBelles]

Anyone ever deal with a WD external hard drive that has data on it that is not visible?

I sent the hard drive away to get data, and they put data on it using a unix/linux computer. I am personally using a Windows 7 laptop. I can get to the data on the unix laptop at work, but I really need the data at home and at school. When I plug in the external hard drive into my windows laptop, the driver installs and I can look at the driver details, ect.

I cannot get to the data on the hard drive to transfer it or use it.

Help! Thank you!!

[thetruesms]

Since it was done in linux, the drive was probably formatted in the ext3 file system. Unfortunately, Windows can't read this, as it prefers NTFS.

If you don't want to format the drive, you'll probably have to find some utility that will allow Windows to read an ext3 drive. I'm sure one exists, but I can't guarantee it.

The easier solution is to format the drive, so hopefully there's enough room for your data on your work computer. The traditional way to share between the two is to use the FAT32 format. However, if you have any files larger than 4GB (and I think there might be a drive limit of 2TB), that's going to be out. Linux is much more flexible than Windows, and I'd bet whatever distribution you're using can handle an NTFS formatted drive. If your Windows machine is the priority, it may be best to go this way.

[tolakram]

This article covers some options: http://www.howtoforge.com/access-linux- ... om-windows

The readonly options look easy enough ... but you know how that goes.

You should set yourself a boot CD for linux and try working in linux for a while. I could never do it, I like playing games too much, but in these days of mostly web access and free office equivalent software it might be doable.