- Paragon Hfs+ Driver Windows 10
- How To Read Mac Hard Drive On Windows Xp
- How To Read Mac Hard Drive On Windows Pc
The Hard Drives formatted for mac have an HFS+ file system. This file system is specifically for Mac systems and windows can't read this file system. You can have access to the HFS + file system hard drive on windows with the help of any third party software. There are a number of tools that can help you in this regard. But using a third party all the time for accessing a hard drive on windows is not good. A user has to know how to convert Mac formatted hard drive to Windows formatted.
The Windows system uses a hard drive with a different file system than the Mac systems. Windows-formatted hard drives have either NTFS file system of an FAT32 file system. Thus in order to make the hard drive Windows formatted, you have to convert the file system to NTFS or FAT32. In the further discussion, you will learn how to make a hard drive useful for Windows by changing the formatting of the drive.
Simply, plug-in the Mac-formatted hard disk or hard drive or the hard drive from your Mac to your Windows PC. I have a Windows 7 PC but I think you can also use a PC running Windows XP. Second, you need to download a software which will allow you to read Mac files from a Windows environment.
Click and drag the Music folder icon to your external hard drive in the side menu, and hold the mouse button down until the window shows the contents of the external hard drive. Sep 02, 2020 Connect your Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC and select ‘Load file system from the device' from File in the menu bar. While you can physically connect a Mac hard drive to a Windows PC, the PC cannot read the drive unless third-party software is installed. Because the two systems use different file systems for storage: Macs use the HFS, HFS+, or HFSX file systems, and PCs use either the FAT32 or NTFS.
Get a Backup
Before going ahead and formatting your hard drive for Windows, you should get a backup. Formatting of any kind can leave the hard drive totally empty by erasing all your data. There are a number of instances when users lose their important data due to formatting. It is very important to save the integrity of your data on the hard drive.
You can take help of any third party tool to make a backup of your hard drive. Or you may opt to make a normal backup in your external drive or another computer. Make sure you perform all the backup properly, an improper operation may leave the hard drive with error and hard drive may ask for formatting before use. However, data from formatted disk error in Windows can be recovered generally with any good tool.
Taking a proper backup is very important for your data before formatting your hard drive. Some of the most important things to take care of involve using a hard drive carefully during any kind of transfer, installation or formatting.
Delete the Mac Formatted Partition
The first step in this regard should be deleting the Mac partition with HFS + file system. In order to make it possible, you have to run the disk management tool. Here is how to do it:
Right-click on Windows icon, select Disk Management.
Select the Mac drive from the list of drives - Make sure this is the drive you want to work on, if you do it for the Windows formatted drive in the list, it may cost you a lot of important data.
Right Click on the partition and select Delete Volume – This will remove the partition.
Right click on the space and select New Simple Volume from the list.
Set the file system as NTFS or FAT 32 according to your need.
Delete EFI System Partition
Paragon Hfs+ Driver Windows 10
Most of the times the mac drives are formatted with an EFI system partition. This is secure than the simple partition and you can't right click and format the drive. To format such a partition, you have to go through a complete wipe out of your hard drive. If your Mac drive has an EFI partition, follow the steps to format it:
Google drive mac os x yosemite. Go to device management window – As explained in the above section.
Locate your drive partition which has Mac format file system.
Note the disk number from the window
To go to command prompt – Type Run in Search Box on Taskbar and press Enter > Type cmd and press Enter
OR
Go to Windows > Type cmd and press Enter
Type diskpart in the command prompt window and press Enter
Type list disk in the diskpart window and press Enter
Find your disk with the disk number that you have seen initially
Type select disk and press Enter
Type Clean and press Enter
This will clean your hard drive all the data will wipe out. Now in order to use this on Windows, you have to designate a file system to the hard drive partitions.
Assign NTFS File System
Once you have wiped out the content of your disk along with file system that was stopping it from use by Windows. you can go ahead and give a file system to the partitions:
Go to disk management again
Select the Mac disk from the list of drives – It shows Not initialized message in the empty disk.
Right-click on the disk and select Initialize disk
Create a partition for your disk
Right click and select New Simple Volume
Set the file system as NTFS or FAT32 as per your requirement
Mac mouse one button. The drive is now formatted and ready to use in Windows Operating System.
Thanks to this tool http://catacombae.org/hfsx.html.
After installing Mountain Lion in my ASUS Rampage Formula gaming PC (old one), I forgot to cancel the SLEEP option. So, what happened is it crashed and sad thing is inside the hard disk (Mac-formatted) are some important files that I downloaded using the Mac. Instead of downloading those files again which will waste more of my time and patience, I decided to look for ways on getting those files by using a Windows PC, which is my other PC.
How to get / read files from Mac-formatted hard disks on Windows?
Simply, plug-in the Mac-formatted hard disk or hard drive or the hard drive from your Mac to your Windows PC. I have a Windows 7 PC but I think you can also use a PC running Windows XP.
Second, you need to download a software which will allow you to read Mac files from a Windows environment. My choice is Catacombae's hfsexplorer. This is a tiny app that you can install in your Windows PC and it is FREE. You might want to install Java SE Runtime Environment first before installing the app because it requires it. You can search Google about 'Java SE Runtime Environment' and download it from Java's website only.
How To Read Mac Hard Drive On Windows Xp
Third, after installing Java SE Runtime Environment and HFSexplorer, you can now run HFSexplorer. There will be a weird error message but you can just press OK to continue. Be sure that the Mac-formatted hard disk is already installed in your Windows PC. You might want to search Google on how to connect a hard drive in your computer.
How To Read Mac Hard Drive On Windows Pc
Fourth, usually you can't see the files right away. You need also to log-in to your admin account to be able to have access with physical drives. Go to the FILES menu and then click 'Load file system from device.'
The easiest way to find your HFS+ volume is to press the 'Autodetect' button, but in case it doesn't work, you can specify the device manually. The naming scheme is as in the following examples:
Harddisk0/Partition0 – The entire first hard drive
Harddisk0/Partition1 – First partition on hard drive 1
Harddisk0/Partition2 – Second partition of hard drive 1
Harddisk1/Partition1 – First partition on hard drive 2
Lastly, you can click to the file that you want to recover or get from the Mac-formatted hard disk to your Windows PC. Click EXTRACT and choose a folder from your Windows hard drive where the files will be extracted. As easy as that!
You can write a comment below if you run into problems.
