MacDrive also has other tools, which you can see across the top: Create, Repair, Burn, etc.

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. If you open the MacDrive app, you’ll see the main screen lists out the Mac drives the program has recognized already for you.Ĭlick on the drive and you’ll get some options like opening the drive, removing it, getting a size breakdown and checking for errors. I was able to copy DMG files to my Windows PC and EXE files over to my Mac without any issue. It works perfectly and I didn’t run into a single issue. Now you can copy data from the Mac formatted drive to your Windows PC and vice versa. If there is any file that is Mac-specific, it will also show an apple icon next to it. If you double-click on the drive, it will open just like a normal Windows drive.

If you connect a Mac formatted disk to your computer, it’ll instantly show up in Explorer with a little Apple icon on it. Once you log back into Windows, everything should automatically be good to go. Once you install it, you’ll have to restart your Windows PC. You can try out the program using the five-day free trial. 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. For me, the Standard version was more than enough. You can see the difference between the two versions here. The Standard version is $49 and the Pro version is $69. If you find yourself having to copy data back and forth between Macs and PCs fairly often, this program is a great investment. You can then disconnect the drive from Windows, plug it into your Mac and access everything normally. Using the program, you can read and write data to HFS+ drives just like a normal Windows formatted drive. MacDrive is a great program that allows you to use Mac formatted disks on your Windows PC like a normal drive. If you use Macs and PCs heavily in your setup, it might be worth spending some money on a program called MacDrive. So are there any other options? Well, thankfully yes. 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.Īnother solution is to enable file sharing on your Mac and access files from Windows that way, but this requires a decent amount of setup.

If you click Cancel, you’ll just get a message stating that the volume does not contain a recognized file system.

Mac external drive on pc