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. Webcam studio app for mac. This also allows you to.
WD Passport Shows Up on my Mac but not on Windows. There are some free utilities that let you read HFS from windows but not write. OSX can read NTFS but not write. Solved WD Passport only. Equipped with WD Backup software for Windows and Apple Time Machine compatibility for Mac, the My Book desktop hard drive can back up your photos, videos, music and documents. The My Book desktop hard drive also works great with Acronis True Image WD Edition software to schedule full system backups.
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. 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.