Yes, I'm one of those Mac geeks who asked for an Apple laptop when the other guys at work all wanted Windows notebook PCs. When convincing my boss that I needed a Mac, one of the things that made it an easier sell is the fact that Intel Macs can dual-boot Windows. I got to order a MacBook Pro, and I absolutely love it.
When I installed Boot Camp, I read the available documentation and decided to format the Windows partition as FAT32 instead of NTFS so that Mac OS X Tiger would be able to write to it without any unsupported hacks. Having a FAT partition works great for transferring files from the Mac side. But what am I supposed to do if I want to access the Mac OS Extended (Journaled), aka HFS+, partition within Windows? Unfortunately, Windows does not (and probably never will) natively support HFS+, so the partition doesn't show up at all when I boot into Windows XP. I've heard about MacDrive, which is probably one of the prettiest and most well-integrated solutions, but $40 to $50 is way out of my price range, and its functionality is not critical enough to ask for my work to pay for it.
I searched around a bit, and I eventually found a solution that fits the bill rather well. Erik Larsson's HFSExplorer [alternate link] is a freeware Java app designed to let you browse the contents of any HFS+ drives and partitions installed in your system. In addition to viewing the contents of said partitions, you can even extract files to any Windows-writable disk. This is almost exactly what I was looking for—although there isn't any HFS+ write support. (Not yet, anyway. I e-mailed the developer and asked if he was considering write support, and he says that he's thinking about it, but would like to implementing some other features first. I got the impression that if more people contact him (erik82(a)kth.se) to thank him for the software and request HFS Plus write support, he'd be a little bit more motivated to implement it.) I extracted a couple of files from my Mac partition and it worked great. The developer intends to open-source his code under the GPL after he cleans it up a bit.
Note: If you used Boot Camp Assistant to partition your volume, you will probably need to click on "Load file system from device" in the File menu and select "Harddisk0\Partition2". The developer told me that he may implement automatic Mac partition detection in a future version.
10 comments:
I couldn't find an email address so I'm leaving a comment. I was on your Lost Talkshoe discussion as Aerie. You mentioned you wanted to start a tech podcast. If you need some additional content I'd be interested in doing a hardware section for each show. I'm constantly categorizing all pc hardware for Elite/Gamer, Pro/High-end, Value/Mid-range, and Budget/Low-end categories. I also do a top pick in which I recommend a piece of hardware even though it may not be on the list or it could be on the list.
I've had my own podcasting network before, but could not find others to stick with it and it was too much work for myself to do. I had 5 shows and produced the content for all of them.
Let me know if you are still interested in doing a tech podcast and if I can help out in any way.
Thanks,
Kyle
Kyle, you can e-mail me at <the JoshMeister at gmail dot you-know-what>
There is a new update of HFSExplorer and a new website: http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/index2.html
thanks for the review
Great find, and good tips. My Macbook harddrive has just died, but im able to boot into my bootcamp partition and using this utility im slowly retrieving most of my mac data..
Nice one
Pete
Most people I know use MacDrive to enable their windows machines to read/write HFS+ formatted drives.
It's not free, but it's cheap and handy.
Know that it lacks write support but it is really handy for reaching mac data while in windows. Though I have both mac and windows installed in my box, most of the time I work on mac and store my files there. Rarely I log in to windows and have to reach a file in mac. So instead of buying MacDrive for $50 you can donated $10 to HFS Explorer's coder. :))
Thanks for the review, Josh. I am also a Latter-Day Saint and think it's cool you put that on your profile. I wish there was a freeware solution for getting read/write access to HFS+ volumes in Windows!
Kawika, thanks for the post. You know, it's funny you should mention free read/write HFS+ access on Windows when you did. According to the latest rumors published just five days ago, Apple may include HFS+ drivers for Windows in the next version of Mac OS X (v10.6, Snow Leopard) for free as part of the new version of Boot Camp.
What a great post! Just one suggestion:If you add some pics, it would be easiler to follow!
By Jordan 4
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