Program For Viewing Mac Formaated Drive On Windows

 

Hi Guys Need some help, i recently damaged my Apple Mac mainboard, the HDD is working,i need to read and copy the files from the Mac hdd onto my windows based PC. Windows does not. MacDrive is a great program that allows you to use Mac formatted disks on your Windows PC like a normal drive. Using the program, you can read and write data to HFS+ drives just like a normal Windows formatted drive.

If you dual-boot your Hackintosh, you've probably noticed that Windows can't read hard drive partitions used by Mac OS X. Mac OS X uses the HFS+ hard drive format, which Windows doesn't support. Luckily, you can enable HFS+ support on Windows with the help of one or two Windows drivers (depending on your budget). Read past the break for a tutorial on how to access your Hackintosh's Mac OS X hard drive partition from Windows.
Having read/write access for your Mac partition on Windows will come in handy if your Hackintosh becomes unbootable, because you'll be able to boot into Windows to recover your files (and possibly fix your Hackintosh's boot problem). On top of that, it's simply convenient.
LATEST UPDATE (January 26, 2013): Added Apple's Boot Camp Drivers to the article.

Paragon HFS+ ($20)
Paragon HFS+ ($20) is a Windows application that mounts all of your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer (a.k.a. My Computer) and gives you read and write access. There's a 10-day trial available. Paragon HFS+ runs in the background and automatically starts on bootup, so accessing your Mac drives will feel exactly like accessing normal Windows drives.
Paragon is the same company that makes NTFS+ for Mac OS X, my recommended solution for enabling NTFS write support on Mac OS X Lion. If you're looking for an alternative to Paragon HFS+, then you can also consider MacDrive ($50; 5-day trial), which is the solution that I'm currently using on my own Hackintosh. It has a higher price tag and doesn't offer much more than Paragon HFS+, but it's an option. If purchasing apps is not an option for you, check out the following section.
Apple Boot Camp Drivers (Free)

Reading Mac Formatted Drive On Windows


Apple's Boot Camp software is designed to help you run Windows on real Macs. Among other things, Boot Camp includes built-in HFS+ drivers for Windows. These drivers will mount your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer and give you read access (but no write access). If you don't need to write any files to your Mac hard drives, using them is a free and relatively pain-free solution.
While the HFS+ drivers are normally packaged as part of Apple's Boot Camp Assistant software, you can download them separately below.
DOWNLOAD: HFS Driver v.4.0.2.0
The above download is a ZIP file; open the file in Windows by double-clicking it. Once opened, double-click the 'Add_AppleHFS.reg' file. This will add the Boot Camp drivers to your Windows registry.

Open Mac Formatted Drive On Windows


Next, open either the 'For 32-bit Windows' or 'For 64-bit Windows' folder, depending on your copy of Windows. (To find out whether your copy of Windows is 32-bit or 64-bit, click on the Start Menu, and then right-click on 'My Computer' and go to 'Properties'.) Inside these folders are two device driver files. Copy these two files to C:WindowsSystem32drivers. This will install the actual drivers into Windows; reboot your computer afterwards. Once Windows has restarted, your Mac hard drives will be mounted, and you will be able to read files from them properly.
NOTES:

Program For Viewing Mac Formatted Drive On Windows

  • This method has only been confirmed to work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.
  • You must uninstall Paragon HFS+ or MacDrive from your computer before installing Apple's HFS+ drivers.
  • To uninstall Apple's HFS+ drivers, delete the two driver files from C:WindowsSystem32drivers. Restart your computer. Then, double-click on the 'Remove_AppleHFS.reg' file to remove the drivers from your Windows registry.

SOURCE: Apple HFS+ Windows Driver (Download) [MacRumors]

Even though OS X can read Windows formatted hard drives just fine, the opposite is still not true, even with Windows 10. Granted, OS X can’t write to a Windows formatted disk, but at least it can read the contents of the drive and you can copy the data to your Mac computer.

Windows has absolutely no support for the Mac hard disk file format (HFS+). This means that if you connect a Mac formatted drive to Windows, you’ll simply get a blank drive letter and a message asking to format the disk.

If you click Cancel, you’ll just get a message stating that the volume does not contain a recognized file system.

I’ve already written about how, if your external USB drive is not recognized by Windows, you might have to use the exFAT file format, which both Windows and Mac support, however, this requires formatting the drive and copying all the data back on.

Another solution is to enable file sharing on your Mac and access files from Windows that way, but this requires a decent amount of setup. So are there any other options? Well, thankfully yes. If you use Macs and PCs heavily in your setup, it might be worth spending some money on a program called MacDrive.

MacDrive

MacDrive is a great program that allows you to use Mac formatted disks on your Windows PC like a normal drive. Using the program, you can read and write data to HFS+ drives just like a normal Windows formatted drive.

You can then disconnect the drive from Windows, plug it into your Mac and access everything normally. If you find yourself having to copy data back and forth between Macs and PCs fairly often, this program is a great investment.

Reading mac formatted drive on windows

The Standard version is $49 and the Pro version is $69. You can see the difference between the two versions here. For me, the Standard version was more than enough. If you need to mount Mac formatted RAID sets on your PC or create ISO Mac images in Windows, then the Pro version will be necessary.

You can try out the program using the five-day free trial. Once you install it, you’ll have to restart your Windows PC. Once you log back into Windows, everything should automatically be good to go. If you connect a Mac formatted disk to your computer, it’ll instantly show up in Explorer with a little Apple icon on it.

If you double-click on the drive, it will open just like a normal Windows drive. If there is any file that is Mac-specific, it will also show an apple icon next to it.

Now you can copy data from the Mac formatted drive to your Windows PC and vice versa. It works perfectly and I didn’t run into a single issue. I was able to copy DMG files to my Windows PC and EXE files over to my Mac without any issue.

If you open the MacDrive app, you’ll see the main screen lists out the Mac drives the program has recognized already for you.

Click on the drive and you’ll get some options like opening the drive, removing it, getting a size breakdown and checking for errors.

Can Windows Read Mac Formatted Drive On Pc

I really like the fact that Disk Aware is part of this program because it allows you to quickly see what is taking up the most space on your hard drive, just like TreeSize does for Windows.

MacDrive also has other tools, which you can see across the top: Create, Repair, Burn, etc. Using Repair, you can connect a Mac drive to your Windows PC and fix it so that the data can be accessed. This is a great tool if you are a PC technician and someone brings you a Mac formatted hard drive that is corrupt or unreadable by OS X. You can use Mac Drive to try and repair it and access the data right on your PC.

Using the Create tab, you can create, delete or format partitions on a Mac disk. The Burn tab allows you to burn a CD/DVD for your Mac.

Overall, it’s an excellent program that is well worth the cost if you work with both operating systems on a regular basis. There is no other program out there that lets you access Mac files on a PC as easily and seamlessly as MacDrive. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!