Windows can’t normally read Mac-formatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. But third-party tools fill the gap and provide access to drives formatted with Apple’s HFS+ file system on Windows.
This also allows you to. If you know you’re going to use a drive on both Mac and Windows, you should use the exFAT file system, which is compatible with both. But if you didn’t foresee that, you may have formatted your drive with Apple’s HFS Plus, which Windows can’t read by default. In fact, some manufacturers sell “Mac” drives pre-formatted with this Mac-only file system. Don’t Format the Drive! (Yet) When you connect a Mac-formatted drive to Windows, you’ll be informed that “you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” Don’t click the “Format disk” button or Windows will erase the contents of the drive–click “Cancel”! This message appears because Windows doesn’t understand Apple’s HFS+ file system.
Right now, we think the overall best external hard drive for Mac and PC is the Western Digital My Passport 4TB. It offers the best balance of speed, reliability, portability and price. It offers the best balance of speed, reliability, portability and price.
That’s fine, because other applications do. Just don’t format the drive until you get the important files off the drive. Of course, if the drive doesn’t have any important files on it, you can go ahead and format it. But be absolutely sure there’s nothing you need before you do.
Option One: HFSExplorer Is Free and Basic RELATED: If you only need to get a couple files off the drive, we recommend. It’s the only completely free way to access a Mac-formatted drive. It does require, however, so you’ll have to. Then, install HFSExplorer like you would any other Windows program.
HFSExplorer isn’t fancy, though, and doesn’t have a lot of features. You can’t use it to write to Mac-formatted drives, and it doesn’t install a file system driver that integrates into File Explorer.
But you can open HFSExplorer, read a Mac-formatted drive, and copy the files to your Windows PC without paying a dime. It can also mount Mac.dmg disk images to get at the files inside them. This application’s read-only nature isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It ensures that no bug in the third-party driver can damage your Mac-formatted drive and the files on it. You can set read-only mode in other applications, too–but, if you’re not going to use their write support, there’s less reason to pay for them. To use HFSExplorer, connect your Mac-formatted drive to your Windows PC and launch HFSExplorer. Click the “File” menu and select “Load File System From Device.” It will automatically locate the connected drive, and you can load it.
You’ll see the contents of the HFS+ drive in the graphical window. Just select the files or folders you want, click “Extract,” and choose a folder. They’ll be copied to the location you choose on your PC. Option Two: Paragon HFS+ is $20, But Offers Write Access and Better Integration Paragon’s is a bit fancier, but it’ll cost you. This tool installs a file system driver that allows you to access a Mac-formatted drive like any other drive in File Explorer, or any other Windows application with an open or save dialog.
It boasts improved speed, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it were faster than HFSExplorer. And, unlike HFSExplorer, it offers full read/write access to Mac-formatted drives, so you can write to them from within Windows.
Just install it, and Mac drives will show up like any other drive. If you need to work with Mac-formatted drives on a regular basis and you want the operating system integration, speed, and write access, Paragon HFS+ is a great choice and will be worth it for you. But, if you just need to get some files off a Mac-formatted drive occasionally, this is overkill and you can save $20 by sticking with HFSExplorer. Paragon does offer a 10-day free trial of HFS+ for Windows, so you can give it a try and see if it works for you. And, if you just need to get files off of a Mac-formatted drive once, you can just use the trial and be done with the application by the time it expires. Option Three: Mediafour MacDrive Costs $50 to $70, But Includes More Features Mediafour’s is similar to Paragon’s HFS+ for Windows, but with more features and polish. It’s noticeably more expensive than Paragon HFS+ too, at $50 for the Standard version and $70 for the Pro version.
For most people, this software won’t really be worth it. But it offers a few unique features, like support for Mac-formatted RAID disks. It also offers a graphical interface with support for verifying, repairing, and formatting Mac-formatted drives. Paragon’s HFS+ gets out of your way and doesn’t provide a graphical interface–it just enables access to HFS+ drives in File Explorer and other applications. If you need all these tools, go for it–this is the most full-featured solution for working with Mac-formatted drives on Windows. But you probably don’t need all these tools. Mediafour does offer a 5-day free trial of MacDrive–both the Standard and Pro versions–so you can give it a try and see if those features are worth it for you.
Option Four: Format the Drive as exFAT–But Warning, This Will Erase Your Data! RELATED: Once you’ve gotten all the data off the Mac-formatted drive, you’ll probably want to. Both Windows and Mac OS X have full read-write support for exFAT drives without any additional third-party software. FAT32 has some serious limitations–individual files can only be up to 4GB in size each, for example–but exFAT doesn’t.
Rather than use a Mac-formatted drive, you should get the important files off of it and use exFAT-formatted drives for moving data between Macs and PCs. To format the drive in Windows, right-click it in the File Explorer window and select “Format.” Choose the “exFAT” file system in the list and click “Start.” Remember, this will erase all the files on the drive! Be absolutely sure you have your files off the drive and that you’ve selected the correct drive you want to format! When you’re done, the drive should work on both Windows PCs and Macs with no problem. By the way, this works great for Windows users too–Macs can’t natively, although they can read files from NTFS drives. So no matter what your primary platform, exFAT is probably the way to go.
WD My Passport Not Recognized on Mac ' I have a WD My Passport external which is not recognized on Mac, but I have stored many files on this external HDD. So can anybody tell me how to recover data from an unreadable external hard drive for Mac? I have some important excel files on this external, so I would appreciate it very much if anybody can recommend useful.' WD My Passport external hard drive is able to work on Mac and Windows PC for data transferring or backup. If a WD My Passport by Mac OS, you had better make it clear if the problem is caused by external HDD error or Mac OS crash. You can connect the WD My Passport to another computer to see if it can work normally. Once you are sure that the WD My Passport is corrupted and becomes inaccessible, you had better stop performing any further operation to this external and then you can use data recovery software to get back lost data.
Data Recovery When WD My Passport Is Not Readable on Mac For an unreadable external hard drive data recovery, you need to rely on a professional data recovery program. Is a good solution for data recovery from any storage media including WD My Passport when it is not detected by Mac OS or other PC.
You just need to plug the external to a PC, and this data recovery software will deep scan the external even if it cannot work normally. ICare Data Recovery is a read-only program which is compatible with Windows OS, so you should plug your external to a Windows PC in order to retrieve all lost data when the WD My Passport is not recognized on Mac. Now, you can follow the steps below to recover unreadable data: Step1. Download and install iCare Data Recovery on Windows PC. Run the software and choose a proper scan mode.
Select the WD My Passport external and then wait the software to scan it. When scanning is completed, you can preview found files and then save the lost data to another drive.
Possible Reasons Why WD My Passport Does Not Work on Mac Everybody knows that the most important thing is to restore all lost data when a WD My Passport drive is not recognized on Mac, but many people still like to know the reasons why an external hard drive stops working on Mac. Here are some possible reasons:. WD My Passport external contains too many bad sectors. The WD My Passport is infected with virus or Trojan.
WD My Passport portable HDD file system is corrupted. WD my passport external hard disk is formatted wrong or needs updated drivers. More other reasons Solution When WD My Passport Is Not Recognized due to Incompatibility issue An external hard drive might not show up on a computer when it is formatted improperly.
As you know, when you buy a new external hard drive, it usually has FAT32 or NTFS file system. Both of file systems are able to be recognized by Windows OS, but it might become unreadable when you plug an external hard drive that has FAT32 or NTFS file system to a Mac computer. Therefore, if a WD my passport external hard drive is not recognized by Mac OS, but it is able to be compatible with Windows OS, you only need to format it to HFS+ file system which is able to be recognized by Mac OS. WD My Passport Does Not Show up due to Virus Attack As mentioned above, an external hard drive must be formatted properly so that it can be detected by Windows or Mac OS. However, sometimes, virus infection might corrupt the file system of WD my passport external hard drive and make it not show up when you connect the external to your computer.
In this situation, you can recover all inaccessible data at first and then you can run antivirus software to scan the external hard drive and finally format the external into proper format. WD My Passport External Is Recognized on Mac but becomes Inaccessible Another situation is that the WD my passport portable hard drive can show up on Mac OS when you plug it to your computer, but the problem is that you are unable to access any data stored on this disk. In this situation, you can also check whether the external hard drive file system is compatible with Mac OS.
If WD my passport external HDD has unknown file system, you can use iCare Data Recovery to recover files from inaccessible drive and then try to format the WD my passport external hard drive to HFS+ file system. If you want to use your external hard drive in Windows PC, you can connect it to a Windows PC and file system. It does not matter why a WD My Passport external HDD is not recognized, you have chance to as long as it is not physically damaged or overwritten. Hot Articles. Related Articles.