Hfs+ Reader

[Salomon Thoj]

SinceI cannot comment (not enough reputation here:). I will post this answer to point out that the answer above appears to be for a hfs+ HD that is not journalled. The 'fsck.hfsplus' command needs to be issued with the '-f' option to work on a journalled volume. To avoid confusion I've copied the command below:

This would only run on a volume that has not been journalled. Even with the '-f' option on a journalled volume this check in itself will not allow the remounted volume to be mounted read/write. I believe journalling must be turned off.

When the reinstall didn't help, I ran the VMware Tools Setup via elevated command prompt, selected the Modify radio button, verified that ALL features were selected to be installed on the local hard drive (all were already selected, so no changes were necessary), and then clicked the "Change" button to install and then rebooted. No joy, and the kextstat command didn't yield any new (or differently-specified) kernel extensions.

macOS provides read-write access for APFS, HFS+, FAT and ExFS file systems. The NTFS file system driver in macOS provides only read-only access. The VMware shared folder facility is configuring folders of mounted macOS file systems for access by the guest. Result: any attempt to write something within a guest to a VMware shared folder that's pointing to an NTFS file system mounted on the Mac will be rejected because macOS can't write it there.

NTFS formatted flash cards mounted via a USB reader can be written. The guest sees the reader on its virtual USB bus if you tell Fusion to connect the USB device to the guest. In this case, Windows its using its file system drivers to directly mount any supported file system that's on the flash card (NTFS, FAT, ExFS). That's not the case with a VMware Shared Folder - shared folders are treated more like a network share than a local device.

Unfortunately there isn't much you can do for internal or FireWire NTFS disks/partitions other than shared folders or macOS file sharing. And then you're still up against the read-only nature of the macOS NTFS driver.

Another thought: investigate a third-party macOS NTFS driver such as Paragon "Microsoft NTFS for Mac"- which does implement read-write access to NTFS file systems. That's the only avenue I can think of that would give you writeable shared folders for NTFS. Be careful, though, because there have been reports that it might not be as stable as you'd like.

And yes, I was having an issue with NTFS for Mac's performance on Catalina. It kept setting one or both of my Bootcamp partitions to read-only, claiming that it/they had been hibernated, when that was not in fact the case. To add insult to injury, if I booted into my Mojave partition prior to booting into "hibernated" Bootcamp partitions, NTFS for Mac on Mojave (which had been working without issues) would see those Bootcamp partitions as hibernated as well.

For installed drive, the best thing to do would be to make a small NTFS partition for the boot camp drive that's just the os an applications, and then a shared FAT or exFAT partition that both windows and mac can natively see.

Have had a bunch of customers who complained about not being able to make timely or correct backups (my software checks file integrity after copying and the file checksums failed regularly).

Using the same external disk, but switching to either HFS+ or APFS solved the problems every time.

I don't believe that people using ExFAT to run VMs or store backups are the intended use cases for ExFAT from what I remember of the discussion. IIRC it was designed as an "improved" FAT file system targeted for use with flash cards with a lightweight implementation that could be use in embedded systems having low memory.

just reporting what I see in the field. I suspect it is specific to macOS, not the file system perse, but the implementation. It would be interesting to research this some more, but alas not enough time in the day and there are better file systems one can use. Not sure if it adds much, but haven't seen problems on Windows with Workstation, but also don't know what file system someone is using until they report a problem and I check the support bundle.

Macworld reader Andrew wrote in asking about reformatting his High Sierra system, and wanting to choose HFS+ (Mac OS Extended, Journaled). However, after booting into macOS Recovery, the Disk Utility app only offers up APFS options. Why is that?

When you connect a hard drive that is previously formatted on Mac to a Windows computer, you get an error message stating that you need to format the drive before you can use it. This indicates that your Windows computer is unable to recognize the hard disk and is requesting that you format it with a Windows-friendly file system. On the other hand, formatting will erase all of the data. Is it possible to read a Mac-formatted drive on a Windows computer?

While there is no straightforward process to let you do so, there are several apps that can help you work around it. You can use any of the apps listed below to use drives with the Apple HFS+ or APFS formats on Windows.

APFS, HFS+ (Mac OS Extended), ExFAT on Mac, and FAT (FAT32 on Mac) are available in the Format options in macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later when formatting a hard disk. ExFAT and FAT32 are both fully compatible with Windows when used as the hard disk format.

However, if you choose to format the hard drive with APFS or HFS+, Windows can only detect a disk connected to the computer and cannot recognize the file system for reading and writing data by default. When a prompt window tells you to format the disk, don't click Format but click Cancel.

APFS (Apple File System) became the default file system for Mac's internal hard drive, replacing Mac OS Extended in 2017. It is now also used on iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and external hard drives. There are four types of APFS available on a Mac for formatting an external hard disk including APFS, APFS (Encrypted), APFS (Case-sensitive), and APFS (Case-sensitive, encrypted). None of them is readable on Windows.

UFS Explorer Standard Access allows opening an inaccessible file from Apple macOS, Linux and FreeBSD on the Windows operating system. It supports a great variety of file systems including Apple HFS+ and APFS. However, the free unlimited trial version only allows you to copy files with a size below 256 KB.

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus) file system, also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Extended, is an Apple-developed file system and has been the primary file system for Mac computers from 1998 to 2017. Because of its compatibility with older versions of macOS, it remains to be a popular format for Mac hard drives. However, it is not supported by Windows.

MacDrive is a powerful utility for Windows that allows users to access, read, and write files on Mac-formatted disks. In addition to basic file access, MacDrive also includes a range of features for managing Mac-formatted disks, such as disk repair and partitioning tools. It allows you to read and write files to HFS+ formatted disks, while APFS volume support is limited to read-only functionality.

HFSExplorer is a free software utility that allows users to access files on disks formatted with the HFS (Mac OS Standard), HFS+, or HFSX file system. Keep in mind that HFSExplorer is read-only so you can't directly modify or delete files on your Mac drive with it and you have to copy them elsewhere. In addition, HFSExplorer is not integrated with Windows File Explorer, so you can only view files within the software.

If you believe that using the aforementioned tools to read a Mac-formatted hard drive on Windows is too difficult, formatting the drive is the only real option for dealing with an unsupported disk on Windows. The hard drive can be used easily if the file system is Windows-compatible. To achieve maximum cross-platform compatibility and file size support, ExFAT is considered to be the best format.

This is a comprehensive tutorial to initialize, partition, create a new volume, format, and reformat external hard drives and SSD in Windows 10/8/7 computer with Disk Management and diskpart command line.

Apple computers can read and write HFS+ or APFS formatted hard drives with ease, while Windows has minimal native support for these hard drives. You will require additional software to get around the issue of using Mac-formatted hard drives on Windows. Sadly, most of these tools have a fee for the service. You can access APFS disks on Windows for free using UFS Explorer Standard Access, but it only supports files up to 256 KB in size. HFSExplorer is an app to let you read HFS+ disks on Windows for free.

Jessica Shee is a senior tech editor at iBoysoft. Throughout her 4 years of experience, Jessica has written many informative and instructional articles in data recovery, data security, and disk management to help a lot of readers secure their important documents and take the best advantage of their devices.

I have two OWC boxes that I frequently move from Mac (Mac Studio or MacBook Pro) to Windows 11 (NUC 12th extreme; Razer blade 17). I only have the XT license and I just read about the Pro license that includes MacDrive. Both boxes are RAID0. One OWC box I have it in HFS+ and the other is a replica of the first box but in NTFS so I can move to windows as I have found Paragon HFS reader a bit buggy. I sync the boxes everything using CronosSync.

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