As a programmer who writes cross-platform software for Windows, Mac, and Linux, I often deal with drives that open fine on one operating system but not another. Unfortunately, this is to be expected. Drives are formatted using a given filesystem, and not every format is supported by every operating system.
I recently had a case where my Windows PC didn’t recognize a Mac drive at all. There was no error message – it was as if I hadn’t plugged anything in! This makes sense, though. Mac drives are usually formatted with APFS or HFS/HFS+, and Windows doesn’t support either of those out of the box.
How to check if your Mac drive is formatted with HFS/HFS+ or APFS
Apple introduced APFS with macOS 10.13 in 2017, meaning most modern Mac drives use this format. However, you may still encounter older drives formatted with HFS/HFS+.
If you have access to a Mac, you can easily check your drive’s filesystem. First, ensure the drive is connected. Then, open the Disk Utility application found in the Utilities folder. Select your drive from the left panel, and the right panel will display its filesystem format. As you can see in the example below, we are dealing with an APFS drive:
How to access your Mac drive on your Windows PC
The best solution is to use a driver that will transparently handle Mac drives as if they were natively supported by Windows. The advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to run specialized software to read or write to your drive. Instead, it will appear in your File Explorer just like any other drive, making the integration seamless.
I use the drivers made by Paragon Software. They have two separate drivers to access APFS and HFS/HFS+ Mac drives on Windows. They are available at very affordable prices (each driver is $20-$30 USD for personal use; or $45-$60 USD per license for business use). That being said, they also offer a free trial if you wish to test them first. This will let you validate whether your drive is using APFS or HFS/HFS+.
If you wish to browse Paragon Software’s products, click the button below: