Program to Read Mac Hard Drive on Pc
If y'all've e'er tried to use a Mac hard drive or USB central with a Windows PC, you'd know that Windows fails to read the contents of the drive. However, with 3rd-party software, it'southward nevertheless possible to view all the data that's stored on the drive, even if it'due south formatted for Mac.
By default, Mac-formatted drives using Apple's APFS or HFS Plus file systems are not recognized by Windows, and as a result, you're only provided with the selection to erase the contents of the drive when it'south connected to the PC. This is why it's recommended to employ the Fatty file system if you're going to be using the drive on both Windows and macOS. But what if y'all can't format the Mac drive, or what if yous don't want to? This is where the 3rd party options come in.
If you'd like a solution to this result, this article will cover how to use a Mac formatted drive on a Windows PC.
How to Read Mac Formatted Drives on Windows PC
For this procedure, we'll be taking reward of a third-party software called HFS Explorer, which is simple to use and completely free. You can download HFSExplorer here. Once you've installed the software on your Windows PC, connect your storage drive to the computer and only follow the steps below.
- Open up HFSExplorer on your PC and click on File -> Load file system from device from the menu bar.
- Side by side, you tin select your drive from the list of "Detected devices" as shown in the screenshot below. Click on "Load" to load and view the contents of the drive within HFSExplorer.
That'southward pretty much all you demand to do, you should now be able to read Mac HFS formatted storage drives on a Windows PC.
How to Format a Mac Formatted Drive from Windows
If you lot're non concerned about losing the data or contents of the bulldoze and just want to utilise information technology with Windows, you tin can hands format the drive to a Windows-supported format. This will permanently erase all the files stored on the drive, and then don't do this unless you don't listen losing everything on it. Connect your bulldoze to the PC and follow the steps below.
- Open the File Explorer, right-click on the drive then choose "Format".
- Here, under "File System", select either "NTFS" or "exFAT" using the dropdown and click "Beginning" to format the bulldoze.
That's all in that location is to it, at present the bulldoze that was once formatted for Mac is now formatted for Windows PC instead (again, this erases the information on the deejay to format the bulldoze).
It's important to annotation that if you lot format your drive using NTFS file organization, you lot won't be able to write files to the drive on a Mac unless you dabble with bulldoze UUID to enable NTFS back up which is not generally recommended. If you wish for Mac and PC compatibility, you'll need to cull exFAT to access the drive on both operating systems. You could use FAT32 file system likewise, just the maximum file size is limited to just 4 GB which is not as usable in many cases if yous work with larger file sizes.
For what it'due south worth, HFSExplorer isn't the only software that can read Mac-formatted drives. It just happens to be a free option that is open source. But one downside to HFSExplorer is that information technology is read just, whereas some users may demand to write to the Mac drive from Windows besides.
What virtually writing to Mac formatted drives from Windows?
If yous're willing to pay, you could purchase Paragon HFS+ for $20 which lets you read HFS formatted drives, and write files to the drive too, the latter being a major feature that HFSExplorer lacks. Paragon'due south tool installs a file system driver that allows you to access a Mac-formatted bulldoze just like whatsoever other storage drive in File Explorer.
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This is obviously aimed at reading Mac drives on a PC, but if you're simply looking to substitution files betwixt Mac and Windows, you can share betwixt Mac and PC using SMB networking as discussed here which is a great method for computers on the aforementioned network. Or y'all tin employ iCloud Drive in Windows and also from the Mac to share files between the two platforms seamlessly also.
Nosotros promise you managed to read a Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC without having to format it. Was HFSExplorer practiced plenty for your needs? Or are you planning to purchase paid software similar Paragon HFS+ to take write permissions too? Did you observe another solution for reading and writing to Mac hard drives on a PC? Permit us know your experiences, thoughts, and opinions in the comments department down below.
Source: https://osxdaily.com/2020/09/16/how-read-mac-formatted-drive-windows-pc/
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