The good news is. You can shape pretty much any external hard drive that can plug into both your Mac and your PC. And change your drive so that both Mac and Windows can read and write to it. But before you click the Format disk button and erase all the contents of the Mac-formatted drive, consider the alternatives. Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party tools that will allow you to read Mac HFS+ and APFS drives from a Windows PC. To spare you the trouble of looking for them yourself, we have compiled a list with the absolute best. HFS Explorer is a pretty good software that can help you read your Mac-formatted drives on Windows. As its name suggests, the software only works with the drives that are. 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.
- Read Mac Disk On Windows
- Software To Read Mac External Hard Drive On Pc Windows 10
- Software To Read Mac External Hard Drive On Pc Windows 7
Recovering data from a Mac hard drive to a PC is never an easy thing to do due to the incompatibility of the file system between Mac and PC. However, it's not without any solutions. If the file system of your Mac is the HFS+, congratulations, you can save your time by getting back your data directly without formatting. If it's not, you also get other ways to retrieve your data. Carry out the one best suited to your needs.
PAGE CONTENT:
- Part 1: Recover Data from a Mac Hard Drive on PC in Two Ways
- Part 2: Recover Data from a Mac Hard Drive on Mac and Then Transfer Files from Mac to PC
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Part 1: Recover Data from Mac Hard Drive on PC in Two Ways
Depending on the file system of your Mac hard drive, there are two ways to recover data from the disk on the PC. The less complex situation is that you want to recover data from an HFS+ hard drive, in which you can scan and retrieve your lost files with reliable hard drive recovery software, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. This powerful tool enables you to recover lost or deleted files from your Mac hard drive without formatting the disk to a Windows compatible format since the tool can recognize the HFS+ file system automatically.
Method 1: Retrieve Files from an HFS+ Hard Drive
Install the software on your PC, connect your Mac hard drive to your computer as an external storage device, then recover your data:
Step 1. Select and scan hard drive.
On EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, select the drive where you lose your data and click 'Scan'. Wait patiently until this program finishes the scanning, it will find all your lost data on the drive.
Step 2. Find and preview found files on the selected drive.
Check 'Deleted Files', 'Lost Files' or use 'Filter', 'Search' to find the lost files on the selected hard drive. You can double-click to open and check the found files.
Step 3. Recover and save lost hard drive data.
Select all found lost hard drive files, click 'Recover' and browse another secure location to save them. Click 'OK' to confirm and finish the recovery process.
Method 2: Get Back Files from a Non-HFS+ Hard Drive
If the file system of your Mac hard drive is not HFS+ and you still want to recover data from it on a Windows computer, it will take you more time and energy to get things done. Since the data recovery software cannot recognize the Mac hard drive, you will need to format it. In addition, to avoid a second damage to the files on the disk, you first need to back up the existing files on the Mac hard drive with a third-party tool that can help the PC identify the hard drive. The detailed process:
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Step 1: Use a tool like HFSExplorer to copy files from your Mac hard drive to your PC.
- Notice:
- Although EaseUS Data Recovery software will get back files from a formatted hard drive, it's better to make a copy first in case of rare data recovery failure.
Step 2: Connect the disk to your PC, use the free partition manager, EaseUS Partition Master, to format the hard drive to NTFS or FAT, which is depending on the size of your hard drive. (The Mac hard drive will be identified as 'Other' in the tool.)
Read Mac Disk On Windows
Step 3: Follow Method 1 to recover data from your Mac hard drive on your PC.
Part 2: Recover Data from Mac Hard Drive to PC
If your Mac can still detect and recognize your hard drive, you can recover data from it first, then transfer the files to your PC with the help of an external hard drive.
Software To Read Mac External Hard Drive On Pc Windows 10
Step 1: Download Data Recovery Wizard for Mac on your computer.
Step 2: Recover data from the hard drive to an external storage device.
Software To Read Mac External Hard Drive On Pc Windows 7
Step 3: When the data recovery is done, connect the external storage device to your PC, then copy the recovered files to your Windows computer. Apple equivalent of snipping tool.