In 'File System' tab, your macOS partition will show as 'HFS'. If you installed ext2fsd before successfully installing bootcamp drivers, it will just show as 'RAW'. (kind of proving bootcamp drivers DO work) Right click, select assign drive letter (or change drive letter). From within Mac OS X Lion: To restart your MacBook in Windows, click System Preferences in the Dock and click the Startup Disk icon to display the settings you see here. Click the Windows partition you created in the list to select it (the folder icon will bear the Windows logo, and it will be labeled Windows as well).
Dec 21, 2020 • Filed to: Windows Computer Solutions • Proven solutions
Partitioning is the division of the computer's hard drive into different segments. You can partition your hard drive to the different file systems. You can partition it to NTFS, HFFS+, or FAT file system. When you partition your hard drive, it will be easier for you to organize your data. You can arrange your music, videos, documents, photos, and much more for easy access. Partitioning also allows you to be able to use several operating systems on your device. For instance, when you partition it to NTFS, you will be able to use Windows and HFS+ to support the Mac operating system. In an event where you have partitioned your data, it will be easier to format the partitions without affecting data on other partitions. So if you are still storing all your data in only one drive, then its time to partition the hard drive and manage your data files.
How to Create Partition on Windows 10
Have you installed Windows 10 on your computer? Windows 10 is the latest released by Microsoft. It is an enhanced operating system that is better than other previous operating systems. If you have installed this latest operating system, you need to partition your computer hard drive using Disk management. Here is the guide towards partitioning hard drive on Windows 10.
Step 1 Open your computer and log in your computer
Step 2 Click on the 'File Explorer' button. On the new window that will open, right-click on 'This PC' icon.
Step 3 On the menu that appears, click on 'Manage'.
Step 4 On the new window click 'Computer Management, which is located at the top left. A menu will appear. Click on 'Storage' to get 'Disk management'.
Step 5 Now click on the primary drive on which is usually letter 'C:', and then 'Shrink Volume' to get enough memory space that you may have used while installing Windows 10. To shrink Drive C, double click on it.
Step 6 Now click on the unallocated area that you would wish to create partitions. On the context menu, click on 'New Simple Volume'. It will direct you to a wizard window where you just have to click on 'next' to proceed with hard drive partitioning.
Step 7 On the 'New Simple Volume Wizard' window that is displayed, you have to provide volume specification of your hard drive partition. You will be able to see the volume size of your disk in MBs, the minimum disk space, and the volume that you want to assign the partition. Ensure you enter the appropriate size, and then go to the bottom of the window and click on 'Next'.
Step 8 Now on the 'Assign Drive Letter or path', you need to select a letter for easier access. You can opt to leave without assigning a letter but it is good to assign so that you can know the drives and manage them easily. After that, click on the 'Next' icon.
Step 9 Now you need to choose the 'Format partition' specifications. Select the file system, volume size, and label. Then click on next.
Step 10 Finally on the 'Completing the New Simple Volume Wizard', you will view the specification of the partition. To create the partition, click on 'Finish' and the partition is ready for use.
How to Create Partition on Mac OS X
If you are running the Mac operating system, it also needs to partition your internal hard drive since it will be easier to manage your data. Moreover, it will allow many users to use the computer. Mac operating system includes Mac OS X10.7 (Lion), 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.10 (Yosemite), and the latest released 10.11 (El Capitan). The older version includes Tiger and Snow Leopard. With any of these, you can still perform a hard drive partition. Before partitioning your internal hard drive, you should do a back up of your data on an external hard drive or iCloud account if you have one. All you need is a Disk Utility on your computer. Now follow these steps.
Step 1 Log in to your Mac, go 'Finder' and click on 'Applications'. On 'Applications', scroll it down till you get the 'Utilities' icon. Then click on 'Disk utility icon'.
Step 2 On the top left panel of the new window, click on your hard drive which will be highlighted blue.
Step 3 Now in the middle of the window, you will see 'First aid, Erase, Partition, RAID' and 'Restore options'. Click on 'Partition'.
Step 4 Upon clicking on it, you will see partition layout and you need to provide 'Partition Information'. Provide the number of partitions you want, the name of partitions and volume size, and then click on 'Apply'.
Step 5 Now if you are sure of the partitions you want, click on a partition on the confirmation message that will appear on the screen. It will display the number of partitions that you have created. Finally, confirm the actions by clicking on 'Partition'.
As you can see, it is so easy to partition on Mac!
How to Solve the Data Loss Problem After Creating Partition
After partitioning your computer hard drive and you notice that your data is missing, don't worry! Because Recoverit Data Recovery will enable you to restore all lost data due to partitioning. It can also retrieve lost data due to inattentive deletion, damage, system crash, virus attack, formatting, and any scenario that you can lose data. This software is compatible with both Mac and windows. You just need to download the correct version compatible with your computer. It can restore all data files from your computer and any other portable device. Here is how it works after downloading it.
Recoverit - The Best Partition Data Recovery Software
The best partition recovery software can easily help you recover deleted or lost data from any partition disk drive. Even the partition gets deleted or lost, corrupted, damaged and the data get lost.
Recoverit Data Recovery can help you easily and effectively perform partition recovery, deleted files recovery, and RAW hard drive recovery. Follow the next simple solution to perform partition recovery.
Step 1. With the Recoverit Partition Recovery program, select the partition disk and next.
Step 2. The recovery software will start scanning the lost partition to search your lost data files.
Step 3. In the end, you can preview the recovered files, photos, videos, music, Word document, Excel files, PPT, PDF.
Get the safety device to save all recovered data files, in case the data get lost again. Recoverit Data Recovery is the professional partition recovery program, get download as below and try it for now.
Partition Solutions
- Manage Your Partition
- Fix Partition Errors
- Partition Tips
Summary :
If you connect a drive formatted in Mac to a Windows PC, you'll be prompted to format it before use. That is to say, you are not allowed to view anything saved on it before formatting. But the question is: if you click Format disk, your data will be ruined. This post from MiniTool will introduce several useful ways to help you with that; please read carefully.
Quick Navigation :
Can You Read Mac Drive on Windows
Many people doubt that whether they can read Mac drive on Windows. Some took action: they removed the drive from Mac and connected it to a Windows PC properly. But after connecting the Mac-formatted drive to Windows, a prompt window will pop up automatically on the screen, saying that they need to format the disk before use.
Don't Format the Drive
You should click Cancel instead of Format disk when seeing this prompt. Why? That is simply because the formatting action will damage your data saved on that drive. Is there any other way to read a Mac-formatted drive on Windows? Sure, it is; some effective ways used by other users will be shown to you later on this page.
What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do
Some users said they clicked on the Format disk button by mistake when seeing the prompt window mentioned above; they were wondering if there's any way to help them recover a formatted hard drive. Luckily, the answer is yes.
What does disk formatting mean?
Formatting a hard disk/drive refers to delete all the file & folders save on a drive and set a certain file system for it. The formatting action is performed to prepare a data storage device (including hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, and SD card) for initial use. Two of the most obvious results of formatting a hard disk are: deleting data and changing file system.
Besides, there are also other benefits of disk formatting:
- Get more space on disk.
- Solve disk problems caused by soft failure.
- Improve disk/system performance greatly.
- And so on.
Do you know how to improve Windows 10 performance effectively?
It's necessary to improve Windows 10 performance effectively since various problems will occur inevitably on a system that has been used for a long time.
Recover Formatted Hard Drive
The first and the most important thing to do after formatting a hard drive is to recover precious data from hard drive. MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be a good data recovery assistant: it's clean, safe, and professional. Please free download the trial edition to experience this data recovery tool first before you decide to buy it; after that, double click on the setup program to finish installing the software on your Windows computer, on which the Mac hard drives are formatted.
Follow this guide to recover data from Mac formatted external hard drives:
- Click Start now at the end of installation to launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. You can also open it by double clicking on the software icon.
- Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
- Select Hard Disk Drive from the pane on your left hand side.
- Choose the formatted Mac drive from the pane on your right hand side.
- Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button at the bottom right corner.
- The full scan will be started at once; more and more files and folders will be found during the scan. Please make sure the Mac hard drive is always connected to your computer.
- Browse the found items carefully to decide which files are needed and which are not; add a checkmark into the square box in from of all the files you want to recover. If you can't confirm, go to view the content before recovery by clicking Preview.
- Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
- Select a storage path in the pop-up window to store the files waiting to be recovered; please make sure it has enough free space left. (You shouldn't select the original Mac-formatted drive as the storage location in order to avoid secondary damage.)
- Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
- Then, wait until all the files saved on Mac hard drive have been recovered successfully to appointed place. A prompt window will show up to inform you of the recovery result.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a great tool for recovering formatted SD card or broken/corrupted USB stick. The recovery steps are basically the same expect that you should select Removable Disk Drive from the left sidebar as mentioned in step 3.
After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you've got back all the files you need.
Windows 10 Read Mac Drive
Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?
A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I'll introduce some of the useful software to you one by one in this part; please choose a proper hard drive reader yourself.
Choice 1: HFSExplorer
HFSExplorer is completely free; it's a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.
What does HFSExplorer allow you to do?
- Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
- Check the volume related information.
- Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
- Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
- Create disk images from the volume on Mac.
The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.
Attention!
You need to install Java first if you don't have it on your PC since it's required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).
HFSExplorer: Launch error
No Java runtime environment found. HFSExplorer cannot function without Java.
Press 'OK' to open up http://www.java.com where you can download a Java runtime environment for your system.
You should just click OK as prompted to download & install proper runtime environment when seeing the window above.
How to use HFSExplorer to read Mac hard drive on Windows:
- Connect the Mac-formatted external hard drive to the Windows computer properly.
- Launch HFSExplorer as administrator on your computer.
- Select File from the menu bar at the top of the opening window.
- Choose Load file system from device from the submenu (you can also press Ctrl + L directly).
- Click on the Autodetect button to automatically detects HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions on your system (you can also Select a device or Specify device name manually).
- Pick out the files and folders you want to view and click Extract.
- Choose a folder as the destination place to store the items selected in the previous step (they'll be copied immediately).
- Expand the target folder to read files on your Windows PC.
If the connected external hard drive is not showing up on PC, you can't detect it in step 5. You must make it appear in Windows first.
Is there any other hard drive reader for Windows? Of course, yes; please move on.
Choice 2: Apple HFS+ Drivers
Another way to access HFS + files in Windows 10 for free is installing Apple HFS + drivers.
Steps to read Mac drives on PC with Apple HFS + drivers:
First, you should make sure you don't have Paragon or MacDrive (the hard drive readers I will talk about later) on your Windows computer. If you do, please remove them now.
Second, you should download the correct Windows driver package to your local drive.
Third, you should configure your Windows as follow.
- Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
- Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
- Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
- Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
- Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
- Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
- Restart your computer to make changes take effect.
Fourth, you should connect the Mac-formatted drive to your PC -> open File Explorer (also called Windows Explorer) -> locate that drive under This PC -> access files you want.
Choice 3: HFS+ for Windows
Though the Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a paid hard driver reader, you'll love it after using.
What can Paragon HFS+ for Windows do for you?
- The speed is fast and the performance is stable.
- The Mac file systems are integrated into Windows File Explorer.
- It provides full read and write access to Mac drives formatted with HFS, HFS +, and HFSX (just like other drives in Windows).
- It allows Windows programs to read from or write to the Mac-formatted drive on Windows.
- There are additional features that worth the cost.
How much does it cost?
The Paragon HFS+ for Windows is sold on the official website for $19.95 with a single seat license; $49.95 with one license worked on 3 PCs.
If you don't want to spend money in reading Mac drive on Windows, you should download the trial edition; it is free for use for 10 days. You can access, copy files from or to the Mac drive during this period; it's enough.
Choice 4: MacDrive
If your Mac drive is formatted with APFS (Apple File System), you won't be able to read Mac hard drive on Windows because there are no free apps designed for it. But you have many choices of paid applications to access & edit Mac drive files on Windows; MacDrive is a popular one designed by Mediafour.
Merits of MacDrive:
- It is used to help users read data from and write data to Mac disks from Windows directly.
- You can read both APFS and HFS+ drives in File Explorer.
- It allows you to create and partition Mac disks on your Windows.
- A graphical interface is offered for Mac-formatted drives verification, format, and repair.
- It's a trusted solution which can date back to 1996.
The only drawback of MacDrive seems to be the selling price is higher than some similar tools. You need to pay $49.99 for the Standard version or $69.99 for the Pro version.
Is it worth the price? Yes, if you have such needs; it also includes unique features like support for Mac-formatted RAID disks.
Choice 5: Paragon APFS for Windows
Paragon also designed an APFS for Windows app for reading APFS Mac drive on Windows; it is considered as one of the main competitors of MacDrive.
View Mac Partition In Windows
Features of Paragon APFS for Windows:
- It provides read and write access to Mac drives formatted with APFS.
- It also allows you to access and edit compressed and cloned files (you can only access the encrypted volumes without making any changes).
- It gives support to auto-mounting at start-up; the partition tools of MacDrive are not included in this app.
The biggest disadvantage of Paragon APFS for Windows when compared to MacDrive is the HFS+ support. The biggest advantage of Paragon APFS for Windows over MacDrive is the price – it costs only $49.95 for one license worked on 3 PCs.
Of course, there are many other tools available for you to read Mac drives on Windows (10/8/7, etc.).
Bonus Tip
You can format your Mac hard drive to exFAT, which supports both Windows and Mac OS X. In this way, you can get full read and write access to exFAT drives on Windows without any additional third-party software.
The only thing you need to worry is that the data on Mac drives will be removed. So you need to turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery as mentioned in part 1 to recover the files you need after formatting.
How to format a hard drive? Basically, there are three ways.
Read Mac Partition On Windows
- Right click on the drive in File Explorer -> choose Format.
- OpenDisk Management -> right click on the target drive -> choose Format.
- Format Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard – a professional disk manager.
Final Thoughts
Though you can't access a Mac-formatted drive on a Windows computer directly, there are useful ways and tools to help you read Mac drive on Windows easily. Please just follow the steps mentioned above and choose the tool depending on your needs.
