Another solution is to enable file sharing on your Mac and access files from Windows that way, but this requires a decent amount of setup. So are there any other options? Well, thankfully yes. If you use Macs and PCs heavily in your setup, it might be worth spending some money on a program called MacDrive.
Even though OS X can read Windows formatted hard drives just fine, the opposite is still not true, even with Windows 10. Granted, OS X can’t write to a Windows formatted disk, but at least it can read the contents of the drive and you can copy the data to your Mac computer.
Windows has absolutely no support for the Mac hard disk file format (HFS+). This means that if you connect a Mac formatted drive to Windows, you’ll simply get a blank drive letter and a message asking to format the disk.
If you click Cancel, you’ll just get a message stating that the volume does not contain a recognized file system.
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.
Another solution is to enable file sharing on your Mac and access files from Windows that way, but this requires a decent amount of setup. So are there any other options? Well, thankfully yes. If you use Macs and PCs heavily in your setup, it might be worth spending some money on a program called MacDrive.
MacDrive
MacDrive is a great program that allows you to use Mac formatted disks on your Windows PC like a normal drive. Using the program, you can read and write data to HFS+ drives just like a normal Windows formatted drive.
You can then disconnect the drive from Windows, plug it into your Mac and access everything normally. If you find yourself having to copy data back and forth between Macs and PCs fairly often, this program is a great investment.
The Standard version is $49 and the Pro version is $69. You can see the difference between the two versions here. For me, the Standard version was more than enough. 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.
You can try out the program using the five-day free trial. Once you install it, you’ll have to restart your Windows PC. Once you log back into Windows, everything should automatically be good to go. If you connect a Mac formatted disk to your computer, it’ll instantly show up in Explorer with a little Apple icon on it.
If you double-click on the drive, it will open just like a normal Windows drive. If there is any file that is Mac-specific, it will also show an apple icon next to it.
Now you can copy data from the Mac formatted drive to your Windows PC and vice versa. It works perfectly and I didn’t run into a single issue. I was able to copy DMG files to my Windows PC and EXE files over to my Mac without any issue.
If you open the MacDrive app, you’ll see the main screen lists out the Mac drives the program has recognized already for you.
Click on the drive and you’ll get some options like opening the drive, removing it, getting a size breakdown and checking for errors.
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.
MacDrive also has other tools, which you can see across the top: Create, Repair, Burn, etc. Using Repair, you can connect a Mac drive to your Windows PC and fix it so that the data can be accessed. This is a great tool if you are a PC technician and someone brings you a Mac formatted hard drive that is corrupt or unreadable by OS X. You can use Mac Drive to try and repair it and access the data right on your PC.
Using the Create tab, you can create, delete or format partitions on a Mac disk. The Burn tab allows you to burn a CD/DVD for your Mac.
Overall, it’s an excellent program that is well worth the cost if you work with both operating systems on a regular basis. There is no other program out there that lets you access Mac files on a PC as easily and seamlessly as MacDrive. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
Microsoft Access Mac
Apple is becoming more popular everyday (I love my MacBook and it’s selling in record numbers this year), yet most people still have Windows PCs at home. If you are running both Macs and PCs on your network, there’s a good chance you might want to share files between your Mac and PC. You can do this in one of two directions: either access Mac files from a Windows PC or access Windows files from a Mac.
Today I’m going to talk about how you can share files on your Mac and access them on your PC. The process is fairly simple and should work as long as you are on the same network and don’t have any over zealous security settings configured on your Mac.
The first thing you’ll need to do is enable file sharing on your Mac. Here’s how to do it.
Boot Camp Access Mac Files From Windows
Enable File Sharing on Mac OS X
First go to the System Preferences menu option by clicking on the Apple icon at the top left and then clicking on System Preferences.
Now click on the Sharing icon, which is where we need to go to configure all the sharing options.
Before you get started, make sure to click on the little gold lock icon at the bottom left otherwise everything will be greyed out and you won’t be able to make any changes.
Now go ahead and check the File Sharing box under Service to enable file sharing. This one dialog pretty much contains all the settings and options for sharing. Starting at the top, you can change your computer name to something less complex so Windows users have an easier time connecting. If you don’t, OS X will give it a short name automatically so that Windows can recognize it. Click the Edit button to change the name.
You’ll also see the IP address for the computer listed by the Options button. Under Shared Folders, the Public folder is shared out by default. Click the little + (plus) button to share any folder on your hard drive. Under Users, you can see the standard permissions and edit them as you see fit.
The only other thing you have to do is click on the Options button and you’ll see a section at the bottom called Windows File Sharing. In order to connect from a Windows machine, you have to check the box next to the user name and enter your password. For whatever reason, OS X has to store your Mac user account password in a less secure way in order to connect from a Windows machine. If you don’t do this step, you’ll be asked to enter the username and password from your Windows machine, but it will just give you an error even if you type it in correctly.
That’s about it from the Mac side. Now it’s time to try connect from your Windows machine.
Connect to Mac from Windows
There are a couple of ways you can do this. One way is to simply open up Explorer and click on Network. You should see the Mac computer listed there.
If Windows asks you to enable Network Discovery, then go ahead and do that. Now when you double-click on the computer name, it should pop up a login dialog box. Enter the same username and password that you had entered in the Windows File sharing dialog on OS X earlier. If the user account on your Mac had spaces, don’t worry because Windows can handle it just fine.
Bootcamp Share Files
If everything went well, you should see some shared folders now on your Windows computer!
Another way to connect is to use the Run command from the Start Menu. Click on Start, then Run and type in the IP address or computer name:
Now you’ll get the same dialog box where you have to enter the username and password for your Mac user account. You should now be able to copy files back and forth from Windows to Mac and vice versa.
Access Mac Files From Boot Camp Windows 10
The only setting that can cause issues is the firewall on OS X. Everything should work fine with the firewall enabled with default settings, but if you go to firewall and then Firewall Options, you can block all incoming connections. If this item is checked, then file sharing will no longer work.
Boot Camp How To Switch Back To Mac
Just uncheck that option under firewall options and you should be good to go. If you have any other trouble sharing your Mac files with your PC, post a comment and I’ll see if I can help. Enjoy!