Rakesh Shewale writes with a common question about formatting compatibility:
I bought a new external HDD for my mac about a month ago and formatted it to Mac OS X Extended Journaled. Now it has my all data. But the problem is I can’t access this HDD from my PC which has Windows and Linux.
The trouble is that the drive is already formatted—this limits options, but it’s neither expensive nor impossible to proceed. Paragon is a long-time developer of cross-platform Mac/Windows disk mounting software, and its HFS+ for Windows 10 works on Windows releases all the way back to XP and Windows Server 2003 all the way through the present Windows 10 release. It’s $20, but also has a 10-day trial. HFSExplorer for Windows is free and updated for Windows 10, but requires the installation of the Java 5 or later runtime environment (JRE), which can introduce security issues unless you configure it carefully.
TRYING TO READ A MAC DRIVE ON A PC. You’re familiar with the problem; without any changes, your PC is going to invite you to delete all the data on the external drive and reformat it to work with Windows once you insert it into the USB port or plug in the external device: If you need to access that drive, this message is a scary one! Read Mac Drive free download - Apple Mac OS Update 8.1, Drive Genius, MacBooster, and many more programs.
HFSExplorer – Free, Provides Read only Access. Unlike the other options available here, HFSExplorer is completely free. You can use it to access Apple ‘s HFS+ file systems from Windows without paying anything. HFSExplorer will mount your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer and gives you read access (but no write access). Well, Stellar Toolkit for Data Recovery is a Windows-based software that offers you to retrieve a Mac’s HFS or HFS + hard drive using a Windows computer. With this application, you can directly connect your MacBook‘s hard drive to a Windows PC (laptop or desktop system) and perform hassle-free recovery of pictures, videos, documents, etc. Retrieve Files from an HFS+ Hard Drive. Software recovery tools can help you access the.
For Ubuntu users and those with Unix or Linux distributions that can support hfsprogs, you can turn to a detailed thread at Ask Ubuntu for advice on mounting in read-only mode or, with some additional effort, as read/write.
If you’re starting from scratch, you can initialize a drive as MS-DOS (FAT)—better known as FAT32—which is readable up to Windows XP with the Master Boot Record scheme. Or, as long as you’re using Windows 7 or later with a 64-bit PC, you can pick both ExFAT, a replacement that handles much larger files (4GB and larger), and GUID Partition Map. A drive formatted in this fashion can be swapped between a Mac and Windows PC.
However, you might choose instead a format you can use easily with OS X, Windows, and Linux. Topher Kessler wrote in Macworld in December 2014 about using FUSE to extend which formats a Mac can read and write, including the common Linux format ext3.
While ext3 can’t be mounted directly in Windows, you can turn to the free Ext2Fsd Project, which isn’t yet compatible with Windows 10 at this writing. It’s also an unsupported project—there’s no one to complain to about crashes or data failures. For supported software, Paragon’s ExtFS for Windows Professional ($20, works up through Windows 10) will do the trick.
Open F Drive Windows 10
Find Drives On This Computer
Ask Mac 911
Read Mac Drive On Pc Free Full
We’re always looking for problems to solve! Email yours to mac911@macworld.com including screen captures as appropriate. Mac 911 cannot reply to email with troubleshooting advice nor can we publish answers to every question.