External hard drive not showing up after using on PC

[Amanda Lev]

I have an external hard drive that I have used on my MacBook. My MacBook needed to have repairs and through work I was given a PC laptop. As I had backed up the files from my MacBook on the hard drive, I was using it on the PC to do my work. When my MacBook was fixed I plugged my hard drive into the MacBook to find that it was not showing up on the desktop.
I went into Disk Utilities and it showed up there.
It says that it Formatted to: Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS).
I did not at any stage change the formatting when it was on PC. I just plugged it in and it started straight away.
Is it not possible to use an external Hard drive for both types of laptops? If so that is ridiculous!
I can't erase it to reformat it as I do not have the space to store all of the files that are on the hard drive. So this is not an option.
How can I access my hard drive on my Mac again without erasing everything to reformat it???
Please help!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Go to Finder ~> Preferences ~> General Tab & see what's ticked under "Show these items on the Desktop"

Mac OS X can read NTFS but not write to it without 3rd Party software (use at own risk/back up first) or some serious tweaking using Terminal (use at own risk/back up first) … in Disc Utilities does it show the Ext HD as being mounted?

 

[Amanda Lev]

Thanks for the reply!
It says it can't be mounted until I run first aid. Which I do and it still gives me the same msg. There was a time intermittently when it was working on both a Mac and the borrowed PC (including me being able to editing it). Then all of a sudden it doesn't work on the Mac. I don't get how I have to reformat it and delete everything when it appears it has reformatted itself on the PC because I now can't use it on the Mac.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

... it appears it has reformatted itself on the PC because I now can't use it on the Mac.

Can't see how this is possible because all of your previous files wouldn't exist anymore & you wrote that you'd been able to access them while using the PC …. it must already have been formatted NTFS