Need to recover data from ExternalSeagate HD before reformat

[Ifrah]

Hi,

I recently bought a Seagate Goflex 500gb External Harddrive. Actually, I bought it yesterday. A friend of mine transferred some video and image files onto it from a Mac. now when i try to open it on a PC, it doesn't show up in My Computer. In disk management, it shows that the drive is healthy and everything, but there is no NTFS for FAT32 by it so at this point, I just need to get my stuff off of it and then reformat it. I already talked to the ppl at Seagate and so, this is the step I need to take to get it running and usable.

Can anyone suggest a good free data recovery software?please? (and soon) I have Finals happening and I just can't friken concentrate because im stressed out about this.
Thanks.

Additional Details:
my OS:Windows 7 premium 64 bit

[pcimage]

Try R-Studio and see what that finds.

You can download a demo version then buy a licence if it finds your data.

[poehere]

1. How did you format this drive in the first place when you first got it?

2. Did you format this on your PC or did your friend do it on his MAC.

3. Follow what PCimage said and download free version of RStudio and try this one.

Not sure what your original file system was NTSF or FAT but after it was on the MAC and the files were put into this one you can not see the HDD again. So this is a good place to start and second with RStuido

[Cleanroom]

if it is formatted as HFS+, you can get a piece of software called Macdrive from Mediafour. It allows windows to detect mac formatted drives and use them like any other drive in your computer

[fzabkar]

if it is formatted as HFS+, you can get a piece of software called Macdrive from Mediafour. It allows windows to detect mac formatted drives and use them like any other drive in your computer

Other than Macdrive, there is also HFSExplorer freeware:
http://www.catacombae.org/hfsx.html

However, it only allows you to read Mac volumes, not write to them.

Not sure what your original file system was NTSF or FAT but after it was on the MAC and the files were put into this one you can not see the HDD again.

Both Windows 7 and Mac OS are capable of reading and writing FAT32 volumes. Mac OS can read NTFS volumes natively, but can't write to them. Seagate includes a free NTFS driver "for use with Mac OS 10.5.8 and above. This software allows you to mount the NTFS partition on a GoFlex drive as read and write (NTFS would normally be read only in MacOS), so the drive can be used to drag and drop files between a computer running MacOS and one running Windows."

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/supp ... nstall.dmg
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?l ... 48090aRCRD

Another alternative is NTFS-3G:
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

"NTFS-3G is a stable, full-featured, read-write NTFS driver for Linux, Android, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku ..."

There is also this thread:

Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=785376

That said, all the above is moot if the OP's drive was originally formatted as NTFS (and contained his data) and his friend has now reformatted it as HFS/HFS+.