Free File Opener For Mac

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.

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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 Devices from the top of the software pane.
Choose the formatted Mac drive under it.
Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button.
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.

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.

What about Windows 10 read Mac drive? Please read the following sections.

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 you can use on Windows 10 to read files and folders from Mac-formatted drive.

Note: Choice 1 ~ 3 is suitable for reading HFS & HFS+; choice 4 ~ 5 is used to read APFS on Windows.

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

HFSExplorer is a good tool to help you read your Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC.

Connect the Mac-formatted drive to Windows 10 PC.
Run HFSExplorer as administrator.
Select File from the menu bar.
Choose Load file system from device
Click Autodetect to load the connected hard drive.
Choose the files & folders you want to view in the HFS+ drive.
Click Extract in the graphical window.
Select a folder as the destination.
Expand the folder to read Mac drive files on a Windows 10 PC.

Attention:

HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions can all be detected by using HFSExplorer.
You can also Select a device or Specify device name manually in step 5.

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.

Tip: The Apple HFS + drivers only give you read access to the files in Mac-formatted drives.

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.

Tip: You may find the File Explorer has stopped working or not responding when trying to open it; please don’t be nervous since this problem can be fixed.

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.

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.

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.

By Jessica | Posted to Home > NTFS for Mac Tips, updated on July 27th, 2021 |

This post compares 8 NTFS for Mac software, including freeware and paid app.

They will help you read NTFS drive on Mac and write to NTFS files on Mac, solving your Mac external hard drive read only problem.

Best free NTFS for Mac:
1. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac
2. iBoysoft DiskGeeker
3. Mounty for NTFS
4. NTFS-3G
5. FUSE for macOS
6. SL-NTFS
7. Paragon NTFS for Mac
8. Tuxera NTFS for Mac

1. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is the ultimate NTFS for Mac solution to mount NTFS drives in read-write mode on your Mac.

#7-day free trial#NTFS for M1 Mac#NTFS for Mac Big Sur#NTFS for Mac Monterey

Pros:
7-day free trial
Support macOS from High Sierra to Monterey Beta
Compatible with Apple Silicon M1 Mac
Repair NTFS file system errors
Erase NTFS volumes for data cleanup
Format drive to NTFS

How to use iBoysoft NTFS for Mac for free

1. Free download iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, install, and launch it on your Mac.
2. Connect the read-only NTFS drive to your Mac.
3. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac will automatically mount NTFS drive in read-write mode. Then you can write, copy, delete, and modify files on the NTFS drive smoothly.

Overall experience

Compared with other NTFS for Mac free software, iBoysoft NTFS for Mac tops the list. After free downloading this app and installing, it plugs and plays once NTFS drives are connected to your Mac.

Read Full Review

This small menu bar utility uses an intuitive interface, showing a list of detected NTFS volumes, a disk management tool, and some customizable options. iBoysoft NTFS for Mac makes it simple, fast, and efficient to write to NTFS drives on Mac.

Free File Opener For Mac Os X

With a 7-day free trial period, uses can copy and modify files on NTFS drives for free.

Additional features: iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is highlighted with simple disk management, including one-click to open volumes, clean NTFS volumes, repair NTFS file system corruption, unmount NTFS volumes, erase other disks to NTFS file system, etc.

Sum-up: User-friendly, plug-and-play, free trial version, and technical support make iBoysoft NTFS for Mac the best NTFS driver.

2. iBoysoft DiskGeeker

iBoysoft DiskGeeker is a handy Mac disk management tool, which not only enables NTFS read-write support on Mac, but also helps read/write BitLocker encrypted drive, manage external drives and network drives on Mac.

#7-day free trial#NTFS for Mac Monterey#BitLocker for Mac#Manage network drives#Manage external drives

Pros:
7-day free trial
Support macOS from High Sierra to Monterey Beta
Compatible with Apple Silicon M1 Mac
Read/Write BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac
Map network drives
Free technical support

How to use iBoysoft DiskGeeker?

1. Download, install and launch iBoysoft DiskGeeker on your Mac.
2. All connected NTFS external drives will be automatically mounted in read-write mode.
3. Copy-paste, transfer, modify, and write to NTFS drives.

Overall experience

iBoysoft DiskGeeker is handy tool for people whose NTFS external drives are read-only on Mac. With this software, mounting NTFS drives with write access lifts a disk insertion, simple and intuitive. It works with a wide range of storage types like USB flash drives, SD cards, and memory sticks.

Read Full Review

This NTFS for Mac app will stay in the menu bar silently until detecting newly plugged hard disks. From its drop-down box, you can open, mount, unmount, and disconnect all NTFS volumes with a simple click. Then, you'll have full access to NTFS disks as you use APFS and HFS+ on Mac.

Other Highlights: Besides being an NTFS driver, iBoysoft DiskGeeker also can manage and map network drives. It means your network volumes will be mounted as local drives so that you can access it directly in the Finder.

Sum-up: You can enjoy this NTFS for Mac software for free within 7 days, and then you'll know iBoysoft DiskGeeker can definitely satisfy your needs of an NTFS driver on Mac.

3. Mounty for NTFS

Mounty is a NTFS for Mac free software to make NTFS drive write support on your Mac.

#Freeware#NTFS for Mac Big Sur

Pros:
100% Free
Compatible with Apple Silicon M1 Mac
Support macOS from Mavericks to Big Sur
Fast and free download for full version

Cons:
Rather slow write speed
Unstable and>Supported macOS Auto-mountTransfer SpeedPriceModern InterfaceOthers highlightsiBoysoft NTFS for MacmacOS 12 Beta - macOS 10.13YesFastFree trialYes1. Support M1 Mac
2. Clean NTFS volumes
3. Format to NTFS iBoysoft DiskGeekermacOS 12 Beta - macOS 10.13YesFastFree trialYesMap network drives in FinderMounty for MacmacOS 11 - OS X 10.9NoSlowFreeYesN/ANTFS-3GmacOS 10.10 - OS X 10.6NoSlowFreeNoN/AFUSE for macOSmacOS 10.15 - OS X 10.6YesSlowFreeNoN/ASL-NTFSmacOS 10.12 - OS X 10.6NoSlowFreeYesN/AParagon NTFS for MacmacOS 11 - 10.12YesFastFree trialYes1. Format to NTFS
2. Support M1 Mac Tuxera NTFS for MacmacOS 11 - OS X 10.4YesRelatively slowFree trialYesCheck NTFS drives

Conclusion:

All NTFS for Mac free software has obvious flaws or shortcomings (like low write speed, poor compatibility, and no technical support). Some disadvantages can even put your data at risk. If you don't care about the risks and want to try out the free NTFS for Mac programs, generally speaking, Mounty for NTFS and FUSE for macOS are better free ones.

Most free NTFS drivers are for macOS Mojave edition, macOS High Sierra, and earlier, and few are compatible with the latest macOS Big Sur.

Download Free Rar File Opener For Mac

But you have a better choice, cost-effective NTFS for Mac alternatives like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, so that you can get enough reliability, stability, compatibility, and simplicity from that app. Though they are not completely free, they can provide a lot of merits that NTFS for Mac free software doesn't do.

Why do you need free NTFS for Mac driver?

NTFS is a file system developed by Microsoft, the competitor of Apple. It's for Windows platform, especially used in the system drive. That's why you use Boot Camp to run Windows on Mac but find you can't mount BOOTCAMP partition in read-write mode.

Up to now, Mac operating systems, including macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra and Mac OS X El Capitan, only provide NTFS read support but no NTFS write support.

Business is business, but for users, you need Mac to write to NTFS drives. Users want Windows NTFS file system to be fully compatible with macOS or Mac OS X. Sure. That it. You need NTFS for Mac free software to share NTFS drives between Windows and Mac.