External hard drive problem

[Tradd]

I have an external hard drive, maybe 2 years old. It mounts on my MacBook (2008 model) just fine, but has NEVER been recognized by my Window 7 laptop. I had it before I got the Windows 7 machine.

Any thoughts? It shows up in "devices" on the Windows laptop, but that's it. Frustrating as heck. There is stuff I'd like to access from Windows machine that I can't.

ETA - oops, wrong forum.

[Alan]

It's probably a formatting issue. If you formatted the external drive using the Mac OS Extended format, it cannot be read by Windows, which typically uses the NTFS format system. If you want the drive to be accessible by both OS's, try formatting it as FAT32.

[ToomuchStuff]

Since some are not computer literate, I wish Allen would have also said, MAKE SURE YOUR DATA IS ELSEWHERE, because when you format the drive, you lose it. You then have to reload the data.

[Alan]

Since some are not computer literate, I wish Allen would have also said, MAKE SURE YOUR DATA IS ELSEWHERE, because when you format the drive, you lose it. You then have to reload the data.
DOH!!
Yes, what ToomuchStuff said.