Since I am switching from Mac to pc, I will need to be able to read my external backup drives that are formatted for Mac.
Apparently, I need HFS Explorer and Java SE Runtime Environment version 5.0 or newer. I don't find anything on my pc if I search for Java and I don't see Java on the list of installed applications.
Can I safely presume I do not already have Java Runtime?
Would option number 1 be easy to do for you, or is it too complicated to do? If it's difficult, I can help assist you in it:
4 Ways to Read a Mac Formatted Drive in Windows
Another thing is: I notice you said you are switching to PC. So that means you want to have that drive to work with PC fully. The HFS thing is that you can only see the files in there, but cannot write (save) anything in there, or save anything to there.
See if after you can read those files, hopefully your main PC drive is big enough for you to save everything into some folder that you can make on the Desktop. Make sure you made a copy of that whole drive in that folder (see if you can open files, like videos or pictures), then re-format that drive to the PC file system (NTFS). Then you can move all the backup from the folder you put it in into the hard new formatted drive.
Is that achievable?
I would need a 5TB HD drive to do what you suggest.
What I want to do is move the files, or better the folders containg the files, from the HFS-formatted drives to new external drives (NTFS-formatted). These are mostly image files (a few TB worth). Some folders/files will need to be copied to the pc, but not a whole lot.
This raises the question, will I be able to copy folders including content from the HFS-formatted drive to the NTFS-formatted drives, or can I just copy the files? The latter would be extremely tedious, since I am dealing with hundreds of folders containing hundreds of photos each.
Okay I see. You already have other NTFS drives that you can copy your files to. So do the thing I suggested above, Option 1, or any other option similar to that if you can find online. Then copy-paste the files from the HFS drive to the NTFS drive. Then every here and there, open some of the files that got copied to the NTFS file to make sure they open up.
I'd suggest not using option 1. AppleHFS.sys causes BSOD crashes on both my Apple and non-apple computers running Windows 10.
I would go for option 3 (Paragon). Take the 10 day free trial, copy everything from old disk to new (you can do this a folder level or everything at once if you want). You could if you wanted buy it and keep on writing to the old HFS disks if you want.
If you want read only access you can use this - it says Windows 8 but I use it on 10 and it is free, not time limited and works fine HFS+ for Windows 8- file system driver
If your MacOS disks are new APFS (High Sierra) format (not HFS) then options are more limited. There is a read only driver here but I've not tried that.
In any case you don't need Java and in my experience you'd be better off using the OS own file system. Formatting and using NTFS from MacOs (or vise versa) was never as reliable for me as using the OS designed file system so your best bet is to somehow copy your old data onto Windows formatted disks.
I have never even heard of APFS. My data that is written on my backup drives goes from OS9 to High Sierra. Is there way to check how my external drives are formatted? In Disk Utility I see no formatting information, and neither does right-clicking on the mounted disk image reveal anything.
I think I remember something about Fat32 being the best formatting option when using both, Mac and pc. They both can read it/write to it?
I thank both of you for your input and will certainly have more questions when the time comes.
Last edited by battlezone; 02 Jan 2018 at 14:36.
If you haven't heard of APFS you probably don't have it as it is fairly new - most likely you have HFS+ as that has been standard formatting for the last decade or more. You can tell by going to the relevant volume and either right click (>Information) or pressing Command + I on it to show the "Get Info" pop-up.
FAT file systems (FAT16, FAT32, ExFAT) these days are for formatting small USB keys / SD Cards. They are good for that but terrible for Mass Storage. It was often recommended in the past for people who mix/match MacOS and Windows to use ExFAT (as it doesn't have the file size limitation of other FAT filesystems) but honestly it is a rubbish idea.
Neither Windows or MacOs can deal with them well. Either will format a volume with them (with limitations) and write to it for a few weeks and then (especially if using MacOS) the volume will become corrupt. Just Google "Repair ExFAT" for example and you will see thousands of issues. The problem is FAT filesystems are not journalled so if something goes wrong it can't repair itself. As far as I remember Windows dropped FAT support (for OS) in Vista which must be more than a decade ago.
If you want to use Windows use NTFS. If you want to use MacOS use HFS+ or APFS. If you want to use a camera then use FAT by all means until you upload it elsewhere.
To move your data from Mac to Windows, format a disk in Windows using NTFS file system and then (again using your Windows machine with a free driver) copy the data you want from your old HFS+ volumes. It is the safest way.
Read-only drivers (on either OS) work OK but read/write really don't.
I realize I have omitted relevant information. My Mac is dead. The external backup drives are fine. I need to get my Mac-formatted backups to NTFS-formatted external drives, and some of the backup have to go on the pc.
You recommended using Paragon, bu I believe this is software for the Mac, so that I can write to NTFS-formatted drives.
So either I need to find a way to use the pc to access the data on the Mac-formatted drives and move it to NTSF-formatted drives, or I can use another iMac that I have available. But that second option would be terribly slow and tedious, since it that iMac has small hard drive.
I apologize for not mentioning that my Mac was dead.
So what's my best COA?
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