Hello all. First time poster here. I did a search and I didn't quite find anything that matched my problem, so I hope this hasn't already been covered.
I just got a new computer that is running Vista. On my old computer, I had a Lacie 500GB external hard drive (FAT32) hooked up that worked just fine. When I hooked the hard drive up to my new computer, Vista immediately recognized it and offered to download the drivers (or something like that anyway) and so I accepted. Upon Vista saying the driver installation was complete, it let me view the hard drive. . . but it says it's empty. I had about 150GB worth of stuff in there. I tried restarting and switching USB ports but nothing worked.
My friend suggested that maybe Vista couldn't read FAT32 and to hook it up to a Mac and transfer all the data to another hard drive and then reformat the one that isn't working from FAT 32 to NTFS. So I tried hooking it up to a Mac running OS X, but it too said it was empty.
I don't think the hard drive is ruined since it was working fine before I switched computers. Any suggestions? Also, is it ok to reformat a hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS while there's still data on the drive, or will this erase the drive?
Thanks.
I just got a new computer that is running Vista. On my old computer, I had a Lacie 500GB external hard drive (FAT32) hooked up that worked just fine. When I hooked the hard drive up to my new computer, Vista immediately recognized it and offered to download the drivers (or something like that anyway) and so I accepted. Upon Vista saying the driver installation was complete, it let me view the hard drive. . . but it says it's empty. I had about 150GB worth of stuff in there. I tried restarting and switching USB ports but nothing worked.
My friend suggested that maybe Vista couldn't read FAT32 and to hook it up to a Mac and transfer all the data to another hard drive and then reformat the one that isn't working from FAT 32 to NTFS. So I tried hooking it up to a Mac running OS X, but it too said it was empty.
I don't think the hard drive is ruined since it was working fine before I switched computers. Any suggestions? Also, is it ok to reformat a hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS while there's still data on the drive, or will this erase the drive?
Thanks.