Usually Windows cannot read Mac formatted drive, but if you wish to use third party tools that can fill up the gap and provide access to Mac interface with Apple’s HFS+ file system on windows.
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. Connect the drive to the Mac. Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in 'Disk Utility' to find the program. Select the drive. HFSExplorer allows you to browse your Mac volumes with a graphical file system browser, extract files (copy to hard disk), view detailed information about the volume and create disk images from the volume. HFSExplorer can also read most.dmg /.sparsebundle disk images created on a Mac, including zlib / bzip2 compressed images.
One thing you should keep in mind while dealing with this kind of scenario is that when you connect your Mac formatted drive to Windows, you will be informed to erase it with notification “you need to format the disk in drive X: before you can use it.” Just don’t click “Format” or else all the contents of the drive will be gone once and for all. Rather click “Cancel” to avoid the situation. The message generally pops up because Windows does not understand or recognize the Apple’s HFS+ file system. So don’t format until you get the important files out of the drive. But if it does not contain any important files, then you can surely go ahead by clicking the “Format” button.
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.
Here in this article we would use certain third party tools to read the Mac formatted drive on Windows. Just carry on reading to learn the methods in real.
Method #1: Use HFSExplorer To Read Mac on Windows
It is freeware software available easily on the internet and can be used to read Mac files on Windows interface. Although HFSExplorer is not that fancy in appearance, but it does not install any driver that gets integrated with windows file explorer. So you can only open, read and copy the Mac OS files to Windows directory. In order to know its usage read carefully the steps mentioned below:
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Step 1. Download HFSExplorer and install it accurately on your Windows PC.
Step 2. Connect your Mac formatted drive to your Windows PC and launch the HFSExplorer with admin privileges.
Step 3. Now go to “File” menu and click on “Load file system from device..”. It will trace your connected drive all of its own accord and you can easily load it.
Step 4. Once the files system is loaded you can see the file contents of the Mac formatted drive on the Graphical window.
Step 5. Select your files, and click “Extract” and choose a folder to save the extracted materials. They will straight away be copied to the location you have chosen on PC.
Also read: How to wipe a Mac clean before selling
Method #2:Open .Pages on Windows using iCloud
Opening a .page file format on Windows is not as simple as double-clicking the file and accessing it right away. But as long as you have the access to Apple ID, or any web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer, you can definitely pull off the task. Just go through the method description given below to actuate the task:
Step 1. From your Windows PC, open any of your default browser and visit iCloud.com.
Step 2. Next you have to sign in with your Apple ID. If you don’t have one, you can create one by the Sign-up option posted on the webpage. Now the surprising part is that signing up for an Apple ID immediately grants you 5 GB of free iCloud storage and this is what we are going to put to use in this tutorial.
Step 3. Once you are signed in to your Apple ID, click on the “Pages” icon and new windows will pop up.
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Step 4. Click on “Settings” icon which is actually a “gear” icon and click on “Upload Document” option from the context menu. Again a new window will open up, and you have got to browse the pages that you wish to edit and upload it.
Step 5. Now to do the editing part, there are options available:
- Once the pages have been uploaded to iCloud, you can directly open and edit the documents utilizing web-friendly version of the Pages on the browser. It may not have all the tools you require as that of the Page app, yet it is commendable for quick changes.
- Secondly, you can click on “Tools” icon and choose “Download a Copy” option form the sub-menu and select “word” to re-export the documents as Word-friendly files and open it using MS work in your Windows PC. The documents will be downloaded as .doc file and is made available for further download on your PC.
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Step 6. Your file would now be downloaded with .doc extension which can be easily accessed with MS Word Processors.
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Conclusion:
Whether you use Mac or Windows OS, there shall obviously come a time when you will be bound to do use documents on both the systems, and you would definitely need a way out to open and modify documents between both the OS. Now running documents with .doc or .docx extension of windows is not that difficult to run on Mac, but if you decide to open .page file on Windows, follow the guidelines elaborated above.