usb hard drive

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hi , i have a seagate usb drive that that has been connected to abuffalo
network drive ,recently i have been having problems connecting to the usb
drive through the nas connection so i contacted buffalo support and they
suggested reformating in ext3 this has not worked as i cannot connect at all
now so i want to format back to xfs as it was before before i do this i want
to copy the files stored on it to my laptop so i don't lose any info
unfortunatley i cannot see the drive when it is connected via usb to my
laptop,is this because of the present format?does it need to be in ntfs for
windows to read it ?i am using vista h/p
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martyb