You can double click to launch the program, but it also starts up automatically when you install a Mac-formatted external storage device. READING MAC DRIVES ON WINDOWS WITH MACDRIVE 10 Not more than a minute later, you’ll see this:Īs suggested, restart your PC and you’re ready to go. There aren’t many questions, so chose the appropriate checkboxes and click “ Install“. I imagine that the motto is “why can’t we all just get along, man?” too 🙂 That’s actually what I did for this demo!ĭouble click or tap on “Open file” to launch the installer and you’ll find the graphical theme is a peace symbol. Note that there’s a couple of days free grace period with the program so you can defer buying a license if you just want to try it out. OWC sells its products through the Web site (a bit confusing), and you can go here to see the basic differences: MacDrive vs MacDrive Pro.Ĭhoose one and give it a click to download: I’ve opted for MacDrive Pro because I never know when I’ll need the additional features. Start by deciding if you need the MacDrive Pro version (which is a bit more expensive) or can just use the standard MacDrive program. MacDrive 10 is actually easier than a lot of PC programs to install. Time to install MacDrive then try again… HOW TO INSTALL MACDRIVE FOR WINDOWS Instead, click on “Cancel” and pull the drive out.

If you need to access that drive, this message is a scary one! Click on the wrong button and you’re really in trouble. You’re familiar with the problem without any changes, your PC is going to invite you to delete all the data on the external drive and reformat it to work with Windows once you insert it into the USB port or plug in the external device: Better yet, it’s an easy download and install so you could be reading that client’s flash drive within minutes of finishing this tutorial, no awkward email to them required. It’s affordable and does a great job of letting you work with Mac storage devices on any Windows system.

This means that you can easily end up with a Mac that can read PC flash drives (or external hard drives), but a PC that cannot read non-PC external data storage devices.įortunately, there are third party solutions, and my favorite of those is MacDrive 10 from OtherWorld Computing. Interestingly, Apple computer systems have long since been able to read and interact with Windows formatted drives (FAT32, NTFS, etc) but Microsoft’s never felt the pressing need to add support for the Apple Filesystem (AFS+) within Windows. Systems have come a long way in overall interoperability, but there are definitely still edge cases where you can find that you simply have the wrong computer for the job.

Macdrive