External HDD not showing in explorer, only have "Delete Volume" in Disk Management

Question

my external hard disk is not showing up in Explorer. In Disk Management, all of the options are grayed out except for "Delete Volume".

I tried right-clicking on the Disk and selecting "Convert to Dynamic Disk", but it returned with error message "The operation is not supported by the object".

Is there anything I can do to access it so I can backup my data?

Solution

Using TestDisk, I discovered that my external HDD had actually been converted to Linux file system. Such a shame that even Windows 8, Disk Management can't at least tell if the hard disk is using a file system created in Mac or Linux.

I managed to back up all of my documents on Windows itself, using DiskInternals Linux.

Comments

[Carl B]

so there is no data on the external drive?

[Jose]

@CarlB: There is. I tried running Zero Assumption Recovery on it and it does found some data. But the structure is incomplete hence why I prefer to be able to access the HDD the normal way and backup.