Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity
MacDrive 6 - read/write Mac-formatted drives and discs on Windows
If, for one reason or another, you just can't get around having to work on a PC either at school, in the office or elsewhere, MacDrive for Windows 98 - XP might alleviate some of those daily headaches you've been having. Recently updated to version 6, MacDrive enables Windows to open, read from, write to and even format Mac OS-formatted discs and drives (HFS/HFS ). While this includes hard drives, CDs, DVDs, floppies (uh, what's a flop-y?), Zip, Jaz, SyQuest and more, CD and DVD burning is only available for Win 2K, 2K3 and XP.
The beauty of MacDrive, or so Mediafour's website boasts, is that working with HFS/HFS drives is completely seamless once the software is installed - no learning curve, no extra steps. While I (fortunately) don't have a Windows machine to test this, Mediafour offers a free trial (form link). MacDrive costs $50, and Mediafour offers a 30-day "Love it or Return it" money-back guarantee.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
hermann4000 said 6:39PM on 3-26-2006
I wouldn't recommend using MacDrive to write to an HFS+ Disk - it crashed both an internal and an external HD of mine once
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kevnin said 7:19PM on 3-26-2006
sounds like this would be a godsend for those of you doing the whole dual boot thing with the intel macs...
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David Broockman said 7:34PM on 3-26-2006
I can't speak to concerns about it crashing drives, but I did need it once when my only mac crashed and I was forced to use a borrowed PC for a week or so -- everything worked completely seamlessly just like as if it was another HD mounted in Windows.... and I had no damage done to my files once I was back on my repaired mac again.
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Rob White said 7:46PM on 3-26-2006
Having been one of the original beta testers for the program, I can vouch for the fact it's everything it claims it is! I've used it myself since version 1.0.
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epplegacks said 8:00PM on 3-26-2006
Needed it to transfer some video files to a client once. I just used the trial but it worked great with no speed decrease. If I needed to use it more often I would seriously consider purchasing it.
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Joshua Ochs said 8:03PM on 3-26-2006
I've seen nothing but good reports. If you're running Windows natively on an Intel Mac, make sure you get 6.1 or later, as earlier versions have problems (presumably something to do with the new GPT partition layout).
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Ben said 8:30PM on 3-26-2006
We use MacDrive to transfer large video files between our edit stations and the a PC we use for encoding. It has been working really well for us.
Of course, we will throw it on the heap when we finally install our fibre channel and 7TB SAN this summer!
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Taylor Williams said 9:26PM on 3-26-2006
I love that logo. What a great idea. Peace with Windows. That marketing department rules.
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Paul said 9:28PM on 3-26-2006
One minor nitpick - there is no Windows 2k3, rather Windows Server Edition 2k3. That's all.
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Rob Roark said 9:30PM on 3-26-2006
Last I heard was it was broken on XP Pro x64. Can anyone possibly corroborate this?
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cmlp said 9:42PM on 3-26-2006
I discovered recently that MacDrive can't fsck a journaled HFS+ disk that has not been cleanly umounted. It suggests I mount it with MacOSX to do that.
Uhh... the reason I'm *using* MacDrive is that I don't *have* access to MacOSX...
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Vincent said 10:19PM on 3-26-2006
This could be useful for those of you who choose to run WINXP on your Intel Macs. Then, you will be able to access both partitions at the same time in either OS.
(I'm not supporting defiling your system with WINXP, only making this statement)
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Austin said 10:30PM on 3-26-2006
I used Mac Drive once to be able to use my iPod as HFS+ and use both OS X and XP. iTunes had showed it had copied everything properly, but near the end it gave me an error saying it couldn't copy to the iPod. The songs were on there and were accessable, but could not be played. Other than iPods, MacDrive has worked perfectly for me.
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Neil said 12:48AM on 3-27-2006
I can confirm that this works great if you've got an intel mac set up to dual boot Windows and OS X. I can see all of my HFS+ volumes (firewire as well as internal) and they all work as expected from within Windows XP.
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Oyvind said 5:44AM on 3-27-2006
Is there any tool available for the other way around? - Using NTFS on OSX?
I know OSX can read NTFS, but I want to write to the disk as well...
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CUllerClassik said 9:08AM on 3-27-2006
We've had consistant problems with MacDrive. We eventually uninstalled it after 2 of our drives failed. Both the Mac and the PC were unable to recover the disks. They had to be RMA'd... and when you use all your available capacity, having to send some back sucks. I should mention these were 250 and 300 GB Firewire removable drives. Possibility that MacDrive just doesn't have good support for higher end drives yet.
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Eric said 10:38AM on 3-27-2006
I use macdrive extensively everyday as i bounce between my work G5's, my hp workstation and my tablet pc. I use a 100 gig, HFS formatted portable drive between them all. It works great PROVIDED you are religous about "ejecting" the disk on the macs AND you know how to safely remove usb drives from a pc.
This I believe is where most people have issues. Removing usb drives from a pc is not as easy as it is on a mac. It is usually a multistep process which can be a pain.
If you fail to do it then you can very quickly be in trouble and need to reformat.
All in all, its a great product and works as advertised.
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Eric said 10:38AM on 3-27-2006
I use macdrive extensively everyday as i bounce between my work G5's, my hp workstation and my tablet pc. I use a 100 gig, HFS formatted portable drive between them all. It works great PROVIDED you are religous about "ejecting" the disk on the macs AND you know how to safely remove usb drives from a pc.
This I believe is where most people have issues. Removing usb drives from a pc is not as easy as it is on a mac. It is usually a multistep process which can be a pain.
If you fail to do it then you can very quickly be in trouble and need to reformat.
All in all, its a great product and works as advertised.
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Dave said 10:42AM on 3-27-2006
I use this daily to move projects from my home OS X machines to my work PC box. Works flawlessly. Everything it claims to be, and more.
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grovberg said 10:50AM on 3-27-2006
Using MacDrive with Mac formatted disk to go between a PC and Mac is expontentially more reliable than using FAT32 drive (which Macs and PCs can both natively read and write to...theoretically).
MacDrive won't physically damage your drive, so if you had to RMA it, it's because either the drive went bad or you did something to damage it. As Eric pointed out above, it's likely you failed to unmount it. If you move drives just by unplugging them without notifying the system that you plan to do so, it's a crapshoot no matter what system or software you are using.
Also, FYI the "Safely Remove" option under Win200/XP actually can be a one step process if you just single click the icon in the System Tray. For some reason most people double click the icon resulting in the multistep dialog.
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