How to Open an External Hard Drive From a Mac on Windows

Macintosh computers run the Mac OS X operating system. Mac OS X uses the Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) as its method of storing and organizing files on a hard drive. HFS+ supports features such as large files, file permissions and resource forks. Microsoft Windows systems cannot natively read HFS+ formatted hard drives. You can open an external hard drive formatted with the Mac's HFS+ file system on a Windows system with the free HFSExplorer utility.

Instructions

1. Connect the external hard drive to the Windows computer.

2. Download, install and run HFSExplorer, found at http://www.catacombae.org/hfsx.html. This is the only free software to perform this task at the time of publication.

3. Press "Ctrl" and "L" simultaneously on the keyboard.

4. Click the "Autodetect" button, and then click "Load."

5. Click to select the desired files on the Mac-formatted external drive.

6. Click "Extract" to copy the files to Windows.

Resources

• Catacombae: HFSExplorer