• Best Mac File Recovery Software
• Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery software, free download
• Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery Software Free For Windows
• Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery software, free download

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.

Simply plug-in your encrypted hard drive to the Mac on which Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition is installed and launch the software; you will be prompted to key in the decryption password for the drive and once you're through, recovering lost data from it will be as easy as 1.2.3. This free data recovery software can recover data from Mac notebooks, desktops, hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, memory cards, digital cameras, etc. It works on internal HFS+ drives, and on FAT/FAT32 file systems used in USB flash drives and external hard drives connected to an Apple computer. 2# Disk Drill for Mac It is one of the best software to retrieve data from the affected hard drives. This supports both Mac and windows system. Apart from computers this software can be used to recover lost data from the hard drive available in Ipad, Kindle devices, IPod etc. Feb 18, 2019 EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac Free is one of the free top and handy Mac data recovery software that enables you to recover data from the emptied trash bin, Mac notebooks, desktops, hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, memory cards, digital cameras, etc. It works on internal APFS/HFS+/HFS X drives, and FAT/FAT32/exFAT/NTFS file systems used. Free Windows Data Recovery is 100% work completely free data recovery software for Windows 7/8/8.1/10/XP/Vista. It is unlimited data recovery freeware that can recover any data from Windows-based hard drives and partitions.

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:

1. 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.
2. Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
3. Select Devices from the top of the software pane.
4. Choose the formatted Mac drive under it.
5. Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
9. 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.)
10. Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
11. 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.

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.

1. Connect the Mac-formatted drive to Windows 10 PC.
2. Run HFSExplorer as administrator.
3. Select File from the menu bar.
4. Choose Load file system from device
5. Click Autodetect to load the connected hard drive.
6. Choose the files & folders you want to view in the HFS+ drive.
7. Click Extract in the graphical window.
8. Select a folder as the destination.
9. 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.

Best Mac File Recovery Software

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.

1. Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
2. Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
3. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
4. Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
5. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
6. Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
7. Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
8. Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
9. 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.

Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery software, free download

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

Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery Software Free 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.

Losing data that has not been backed up is a nightmare, you might be forced to look for possible ways to get back the lost data. One of the most preferred and cost efficient method is to recover data with the help of a data recovery software. A proficient data recovery software for PC not only recovers files and folders but also ensures safety and integrity of your data.

Discovering lost data from your Windows PC is made easy by using SFWare Data Recovery tool. Built with an extensive search algorithm that is capable of restoring lost or deleted files from any kind of storage device used in Windows and Mac computers.

Features of SFWare Data Recovery

The user friendly and commendable features of SFWare data recovery tool make it a highly trusted PC file recovery software for both Windows and Mac Platforms.

• Complete Data Recovery:SFWare data recovery software is a one stop solution for all kind of data loss issues. Deleted file recovery, formatted partition recovery, photo recovery and drive recovery are all achievable in just a few clicks from the launch screen. This user friendly interface allows you to select the appropriate data recovery option. SFWare data recovery software supports file recovery on hard drive, solid state drive, SD card, USB drive and other storage devices.
• Data View / File Type View:In order to make it easy for the user to navigate through the recovered files and locate them, data view and file type view is included in this data recovery tool. Data View displays the data in the form of files and folders whereas File Type View displays recoverable files based on each file type category.
• Save Recovery Session:Exclusive addition to this recovery tool is the save recovery session option. This option allows users to save recovery progress in the form of a file and resume the recovery process at their convenient time. You can also use this option to get back to the recoverable files list and select the files/ folders you wish to recover.
• Supports and recovers all types of files such as Word, powerpoint, excel, video, audio, email data file, system files, dll files etc.
• A unique feature of this tool is that you can add a custom file type extension to this data recovery software and recover that particular deleted of lost file from your computer.
• Recovered files can be saved to desired drive on your computer. You can also save the files in a compressed file format.

Causes of Data loss:

• Accidental deletion of file:Accidentally deleting a file is the most common way to lose it from your computer. People tend to accidentally delete an important file that has not been backed up.
• Virus infection:A malware attack on your computer can cause serious harm to your computer. It can randomly delete a file and can also cause a permanent damage to the data. A severe virus attack can also cause OS malfunction, which results in huge data loss.
• Bad sectors:Bad sector is an inaccessible sector of a hard drive. Usually information is not read or written on that particular sector of the drive. Bad sectors can make a file stored on the specific sector unreadable by the operating system. The files although present on the drive cannot be accessed due to the same reason.
• Operating system corruption:Operating system is the core software of your computer, if there is a minute defect or fault it may cause serious changes to the entire functionality of the system. An operating system corruption can cause sudden shutdown of computer and this will lead to a lot of missing files and folders. Operating system corruption can also result in an unbootable hard drive.
• Power shortage:A sudden power shortage or fluctuations cause the system to shutdown abruptly. A sudden power failure does not only cause data loss, but it also affects the operating system and hardware of your computer. It eventually affects the hard drive, where the data is stored. Use a power backup to prevent data loss due to power shortage.

Types of SFWare Data Recovery:

• Deleted file recovery:A deleted or lost file can always be recovered from your computer. But the moment you accidentally delete a file stop using the same drive to read or write any more data. Using your computer after deleting a file will overwrite the potentially recoverable data on computer hard disk and reduces the chances of file recovery. By using SFWare data recovery utility you can undelete permanently Shift deleted files from Windows re-cycle bin and Mac Trash.
• Photo recovery:SFWare data recovery software supports photo recovery from hard drive, solid state drives, SD card, USB drive etc. By default, file formats of top cameras brands are built into SFWare data recovery software. Images captured on Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Panasonic can be recovered with the help of SFWare data recovery software.
• Partition recovery:SFWare data recovery tool is one of the most trusted tool to recover deleted data from formatted partition, reformatted partition, lost or deleted partition. Be it a chunk of files or big data of an inaccessible partition can be effortlessly recovered with help of this software. You can recover lost data from PC from FAT, NTFS, HFS, HFS+, HFSX, Ext2, Ext3 partitions under Windows and Mac laptops.
• External drive recovery:Nowadays data is stored in a different form of storage devices and it is used to transfer data from one user to another. In order to counter the data loss issue on variety of external storage devices, SFWare is programmed in such a way that it supports any brand / version of hard drive, solid state drive, SD card, USB drive. Complete lost or deleted file recovery is possible by free PC data recovery software.

System Requirements

• Supported Windows OS Versions – Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 and 2008
• Supported Mac OS X – macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra), OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), OS X 10.7 (Lion), OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
• Hardware Specifications – 1GB RAM, 50MB free space for installation and 32-bit or 64-bit system types.

How to Recover Data using SFWare Data Recovery Software in 5 Simple Steps?

• Step 1: Launch SFWare Data Recovery Software
• Step 2: Based on the data loss scenario, select any one of the following options
  • Recover Files: Choose this option to recover deleted or lost files
    
  • Recover Photos: To recover deleted or lost photos and videos
    
  • Recover Drives/Partitions: To recover data from hard drive, solid state drive, USB drive or SD card
• Step 3: Choose the drive or partition to recover data using SFWare data recovery software
Tool displays the recovered files on the next screen. Use Data view or File type view to navigate around the files to save it to your computer
• Step 4: If you want to save this recovery session, use Save recovery session and resume it later
• Step 5: Now select the files you want to restore and Save it to local drive.
Note: Do not use the same drive to save the files.

Screenshots:

Supported file types by SFWare Data Recovery Software:

Mac Hard Drive Data Recovery software, free download

Use SFWare data recovery utility recovers over 300 file types used across various applications

• Documents:DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, TXT, RTF, HTML, ZIP, RAR, JAR, PST, DBX, OST, MDB, FLV, SWF etc.
• Photos / Raw files:CR2, CRW, NEF, ARW, SR2, ORF, MRW, 3FR, RAW, X3F, PEF, DNG, RAF, KDC, K25, DCR etc.
• Videos files:AVI, MP4, MOV, MPEG, MPG, M4V, 3G2, 3GP, RM etc.
• Audio files:MP3, MP4, WAV, MIDI, M4b, M4A, AIFF, AIF, AIFC, RA, AMR etc.

Why SFWare data recovery software?

• SFWare data recovery software is compatible with Windows 10, 8, 7, XP and it can also recover deleted data from latest Mac OS Mojave
• Recovers deleted file and lost folders
• Restore data from formatted / re-formatted partitions.
• Helpful to retrieve data from unbootable hard drive
• It assists you to recover lost data to Windows corruption