Aluratek 500 GB Hard Drive Troubleshooting

Turn the computer off without the external hard drive being plugged in.
plug the external hard drive in a usb port, power up, the systems post boot up will find the drive and inform windows what hardware is installed.
When windows boots up, it will look at all the hardware and find the external hard drive, when windows finishes booting up you should be able to see the drive in my computer.

If you can't access your files,data recovery software can help.I used this one called Tenorshare Data Recovery to retrieve files off crashed HDD and it worked. Get it from http://www.any-data-recovery.com
If needed,you can download it and scan your hard drive for free to preview whether your files can be recovered.

Did you check the MS hardware compatability list http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx

yes you could simply format the harddrive in Fat32 using your macos that would be the best solution but don`t forget to backup your data by copy pasting the files on your mac or something else and after that to move them on the external hdd again to be available on the windows machine

do you have the drivers installed for your external drive? If not find new drivers for win 7

Read this instructions my friend
It is possible to use a Western Digital external hard drive on botha PC and a Mac. However, there are some things to keep in mind if youwant to do this. Moreover, Western Digital does not recommend doing it.

• For both PC and Mac to be able to read the drive, it must beformatted in the FAT32 file format. In order to format to FAT32 on aMac you may need to contact Apple for support. We do have a FAT32Formatting utility for Windows that reformats WD external hard drivesto their full size, but in only one partition. The FAT32 formattingutility can be downloaded from our Downloads Library. You will find it on your WD drive's Downloads page.
Critical: Do not attempt toconnect any external drive to multiple computers, simultaneously; letalone to both a Mac and PC. This could quickly damage the drive'spartition and corrupt the data on the drive.


• Sometimes, PC's won't read Mac FAT32 formatted drives, andMac's won't read PC FAT32 formatted drives. You may have to re-formatthe drive trying both the PC and Mac until you get a format that works.


• Most WD external hard drives come pre-formatted with one large FAT32 partition, which is accessible by Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, and Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5.


• Windows 2000, XP and Vista can only create FAT32 partitions that are 32 GB's or smaller.


• Mac 10.4 and 10.5 can create FAT32 partitions the full size of the drive.


• There is a 4 GB file size limit on the FAT32 file format. Thisis a file system limitation that affects both Mac's and PC's, and thereis no way around it.


• Finally, you need to understand that if you are using the samedrive back and forth between a Mac and PC, there is always the chanceof files being corrupted. Mac's and PC's are different platforms, andtheir file systems function differently. Please keep backups of allyour files before you start sharing between Mac and PC computers.

Note: Once the data iscorrupted, that drive may no longer be recognized by one or both of thecomputers. Or, the drive may be recognized, and the data may bevisible, but you won't be able to open any files. At that point, youwill need to re-partition and reformat the drive in order for it to berestored and usable by both computers again. In the process, you willlose all the data on the drive. For that reason, you need to keep abackup of the files you are transferring between computers.At the bottom of the page, you will find links for partitioning and formatting in Windows XP and Vista, and Mac 10.4 and 10.5.

What OS are u working on? some old ones dont recognize this big hard drives, cant remmember the limit but it was around 300. Try updating ur OS if u are working on windows xp(get it to Service pack 3). I think this problem was fixed at sp2, but just to be sure.

Check if the jumpers on the hard disks are in the right position.

Are you sure it is not a power problem? If the drive has an external power supply then then will not be the case, but if not, the USB port might not provide enough power.

Also check out: http://www.devicedriverfinder.com/blog/device-errors/external-hard-drive-troubleshooting

A drive making noise suggests that something physical has gone wrong.  If something happened so that the OS simply can't access your data and there not too much physical damage to the disk, try one of those recovery programs, but one that doesn't attempt to fix the disk, only access the data

Hi,

I understand that you are trying to move data from your computer to an external hard drive.

You can just copy and paste the files like Music, Pictures to the external movies when it is connected to the computer. The hard drive owuld be listed as an removable storage device icon in the My Computer window if you are using windows XP.

However, we cannot just copy and paste the programs in the hard drive. You need the installation files to be copied to the external hard drive, if you want them to eb backed up.