Harddrive puzzle

[General Zod]

So, I've been using a Macbook Air for the last few months, and I've finally decided to switch back to a Windows laptop after coming to terms with the fact that I just can't do everything I need on a Mac.

Anyway, I think I formatted one of my external hard drives for something a bit more Mac friendly when I purchased it, but now that I've switched back to Windows my laptop won't recognize it. It acknowledges that the drive is plugged into the computer, but it won't assign it a drive letter and I can't view it in explorer.

I've already sold and shipped off the MBA, so I can't just hop back and forth. Is there some sort of software or trick I can use to make my laptop recognize a Mac file system? This has backups of all of my original pictures for the last few months so there's a lot of stuff on there I'd really prefer not to be locked out of. At this point I'll really take any kind of workaround I can get that doesn't involve paying money. I've tried Googling but the results haven't been a terribly huge help.

[Dominus Atheos]

http://catacombae.org/hfsx.html

[General Zod]

Not recognizing the device I'm afraid. I think I might have formatted it to exFat.

[Dominus Atheos]

ExFAT was made by Microsoft, so if windows isn't reading it, it has to be something else.

[TronPaul]

I'd get an Ubuntu live disk, boot your computer from it, then copy the data from the external to your local disk. You could also try gparted and use it to copy the files to your local disk. They should both be able to mount any Apple filesystem. If they can't it's likely the disk is dead, but before you loose hope, post here again if they have problems. There could be ways to better diagnose it.