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I have some external hard drives that are Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted. What software can you recommend for working with those drives when under Windows? Do you have any experience with this?

Would be best if the software is free, but it doesn't have to be.

Hope someone can help!

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  • @Charles: I have, to the ones where I have gotten an answer. But I'll go through them again if you want.
    – Svish
    May 14, 2010 at 16:52

8 Answers 8

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For read only access you can try hfs explorer

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  • 1
    This link is dead. Dec 5, 2012 at 3:19
  • 1
    @SurrealDreams fixed
    – CupawnTae
    Apr 24, 2015 at 19:12
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You can install Apple bootcamp drivers (no official download links but you can find it on other sites) on a non-Apple machine. This will install HFS+ (the other name for Mac OS Extended) drivers for Windows.

Originally found on MacRumors forum, detailed instructions here

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  • Interesting! Will have to try that out.
    – Svish
    May 14, 2010 at 17:04
  • Svish, did you have a chance to test this solution? I'm curious to know if it works
    – CharlesB
    May 24, 2010 at 19:11
  • No, but I really want to! My problem is that I'm missing the bootcamp drivers as I don't know anyone that has Bootcamp... and things have been a bit busy so haven't found time to search for them other places =/
    – Svish
    Jul 8, 2010 at 22:30
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For those with Windows 7, drivers can be found using Apple KB: TS3172

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3172

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  • When trying to install on Windows 7 got - "This utility was not intended for this operating system"
    – cwd
    Nov 24, 2013 at 4:41
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Seems like MediaFour MacDrive is the recommended one from various places. If anyone has any good and free alternatives or just other alternatives, I'd like to know about those though :)

Along with the ability to read and write to Mac disks and volumes, you can also create Mac disks for easy file transfers and backups. The built-in MacDrive Disk Manager gives you the power to partition, format, analyze and repair disks, while the newly revamped CD/DVD Creator allows you to burn Mac CDs and DVDs.

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I found the solution in here. It works just great. They are the official Apple´s driver set. It works with latest format (End 2012).

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    Note: Only works for XP Dec 16, 2012 at 7:05
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Have you considered going in the opposite direction?

NTFS on OSX

This is what i do. Any External Drive that i connect to my OSX machine that i plan to also use with Windows i make the volume an NTFS volume. osxFUSE(googlecode) will allow you to write EXT3&4,ZFS,NTFS, and basicly any Filesystem on your MAC.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

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    If they were my drives I totally would :p
    – Svish
    May 14, 2010 at 8:40
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Yes I've used MacDrive and its probably the only one around that works good.

Its sometimes buggy though, last I used was up to November last year. Don't know about the latest updates.

I've since changed all my drives back to NTFS, since Snow Leopard has (hidden) native support for writing NTFS files. (Google that - fstab ntfs mac) ;)

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I am using HVF_Explorer with a WIN32 system. HVF_Explorer does a pretty good job, and its free.

Greetings!

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  • Hasn't been updated since 1999, so I doubt it can work on journaled HFS partition Readme doesn't mention support for WinXP (stops at Win98)
    – CharlesB
    May 7, 2010 at 16:40
  • Thats right, it will only work with hfs and not hfs+ , SORRY! Support for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 is OK.
    – user36430
    May 7, 2010 at 17:10

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