Two ways for reformatting WD hard drive for Mac and PC. To reformat WD hard drive to exFAT or FAT32, free download and install the software in advance. And you should make sure that the WD hard drive can be detected by Windows as well. Then, refer to the guide. Download Freeware. MacDrive fully supports GPT partitioning for fixed disks. Fixed disks can include internal hard drives, but can also include portable devices such as external hard drives which connect via USB, FireWire, etc. No additional software is needed to access a Mac-formatted disk that is GPT partitioned.
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Usually Windows cannot read Mac formatted drive, but if you wish to use third party tools that can fill up the gap and provide access to Mac interface with Apple's HFS+ file system on windows.
One thing you should keep in mind while dealing with this kind of scenario is that when you connect your Mac formatted drive to Windows, you will be informed to erase it with notification 'you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.' Just don't click 'Format' or else all the contents of the drive will be gone once and for all. Rather click 'Cancel' to avoid the situation. The message generally pops up because Windows does not understand or recognize the Apple's HFS+ file system. So don't format until you get the important files out of the drive. But if it does not contain any important files, then you can surely go ahead by clicking the 'Format' button.
Here in this article we would use certain third party tools to read the Mac formatted drive on Windows. Just carry on reading to learn the methods in real.
Method #1: Use HFSExplorer To Read Mac on Windows
It is freeware software available easily on the internet and can be used to read Mac files on Windows interface. Although HFSExplorer is not that fancy in appearance, but it does not install any driver that gets integrated with windows file explorer. So you can only open, read and copy the Mac OS files to Windows directory. In order to know its usage read carefully the steps mentioned below:
Step 1. Download HFSExplorer and install it accurately on your Windows PC.
Step 2. Connect your Mac formatted drive to your Windows PC and launch the HFSExplorer with admin privileges.
Step 3. Now go to 'File' menu and click on 'Load file system from device..'. It will trace your connected drive all of its own accord and you can easily load it.
Step 4. Once the files system is loaded you can see the file contents of the Mac formatted drive on the Graphical window.
Step 5. Select your files, and click 'Extract' and choose a folder to save the extracted materials. They will straight away be copied to the location you have chosen on PC.
Also read: How to wipe a Mac clean before selling
Method #2:Open .Pages on Windows using iCloud
Opening a .page file format on Windows is not as simple as double-clicking the file and accessing it right away. But as long as you have the access to Apple ID, or any web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, you can definitely pull off the task. Just go through the method description given below to actuate the task:
Step 1. From your Windows PC, open any of your default browser and visit iCloud.com.
Step 2. Next you have to sign in with your Apple ID. If you don't have one, you can create one by the Sign-up option posted on the webpage. Now the surprising part is that signing up for an Apple ID immediately grants you 5 GB of free iCloud storage and this is what we are going to put to use in this tutorial.
Step 3. Once you are signed in to your Apple ID, click on the 'Pages' icon and new windows will pop up.
Step 4. Click on 'Settings' icon which is actually a 'gear' icon and click on 'Upload Document' option from the context menu. Again a new window will open up, and you have got to browse the pages that you wish to edit and upload it.
Step 5. Now to do the editing part, there are options available:
- Once the pages have been uploaded to iCloud, you can directly open and edit the documents utilizing web-friendly version of the Pages on the browser. It may not have all the tools you require as that of the Page app, yet it is commendable for quick changes.
- Secondly, you can click on 'Tools' icon and choose 'Download a Copy' option form the sub-menu and select 'word' to re-export the documents as Word-friendly files and open it using MS work in your Windows PC. The documents will be downloaded as .doc file and is made available for further download on your PC.
Step 6. Your file would now be downloaded with .doc extension which can be easily accessed with MS Word Processors.
Conclusion:
Whether you use Mac or Windows OS, there shall obviously come a time when you will be bound to do use documents on both the systems, and you would definitely need a way out to open and modify documents between both the OS. Now running documents with .doc or .docx extension of windows is not that difficult to run on Mac, but if you decide to open .page file on Windows, follow the guidelines elaborated above.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
