Macs format drives with Apple’s HFS+ file system, which Windows won’t recognize or access without third-party software. Macs may also create a protected EFI partition on these drives that you can’t delete with the usual disk-partitioning tools.
Other than allowing you to read Mac drive on Windows, MacDrive 10.5 will also help you manage your drives. Partition and create HFS or APFS on Windows and fix any issue with your drives. Whether it is a floppy drive, flash drive or hard drive, this software will handle it. I have a hard drive that came out of a Mac, I am trying to retrieve the photos from the drive. I bought a Sata reader to attach the drive via my USB port and once I attached the drive it spun up.
Some drives are even sold as “Mac-formatted drives” — this just means they come with the Mac HFS+ file system instead of NTFS or FAT32. Macs can read NTFS drives, and can read and write to FAT32 drives.
Back Up the Drive’s Data First
First, back up the data on the Mac-formatted drive if you have anything important on it. This process won’t actually convert the file system. Instead, we’ll just be wiping the drive and starting over from scratch. Any files on the drive will be erased.
If you have a Mac lying around, you can plug the drive into a Mac and back up the files. If you only have Windows systems available, you can use HFSExplorer to copy files from the drive onto your Windows system drive or another drive. HFSExplorer unfortunately requires you install Java to use it, but it’s the only free option here. You’ll probably want to uninstall Java when you’re done.
Erase the Mac Partitions, Including the EFI System Partition
RELATED:Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Management
Mac Hard Drive Reader For Windows
First, open the Windows Disk Management tool. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog, type diskmgmt.msc into the box, and press Enter to open it. This tool allows you to manage the partitions on drives connected to your computer — internal ones or external ones connected via USB.
Locate the Mac drive in the list of disks. Be sure you’ve identified the Mac drive — if you accidentally delete partitions from another drive, you could damage your Windows installation or lose your files.
If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems.
The Mac drive may have an “EFI System Partition” on it. This partition is marked as protected, so you can’t just right-click and delete it — the delete option will be disabled.
To erase this partition, we’ll have to wipe the entire disk. This process erases everything on the disk, including its files and all its partitions. First, note the number of the disk in the disk management window. For example, in the screenshot below, the Mac-formatted drive is Disk 2.
Next, open a Command Prompt window as administrator. To do this on Windows 8 or Windows 7, press the Windows key once, type cmd , and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
Type diskpart into the Command Prompt window and press Enter.
Type list disk at the DISKPART prompt and press Enter to view a list of disks connected to your computer. Identify the number of your Mac disk in the list. It should be the same as the number of the disk in the Disk Management window.
Be sure to double-check this — you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here.
Type select disk # and press Enter to select the Mac disk, replacing # with the number of the Mac disk. For example, here we’d type select disk 2.
Finally, type clean and press Enter. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions — whether they’re protected or not. You’ll have an empty, uninitialized disk after you do this.
Close the Command Prompt window when you see a message saying “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.”
Create an NTFS or FAT32 Partition
You can now open the Disk Management window again. If you’ve left it open, you may have to click Action > Rescan Disks to update the data.
Locate the Mac disk in the list. It will be completely empty and display a message saying “Not Initialized.” Right-click it and select Initialize Disk.
Select the MBR or GPT partition table format and click OK to create a partition table for the disk.
Right-click in the unallocated space on the initialized disk and select New Simple Volume. Use the wizard to create a partition with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. The drive will now be formatted for use by Windows systems. There will be no space wasted by protected Mac partitions.
Some Mac functions require an HFS+ formatted drive. For example, Time Machine can only back up to HFS+ formatted drives.
Image Credit: Konstantinos Payavlas on Flickr
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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.
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.
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.
Mac Reader For Windows 10
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!