ACCESS DATA ON OLD MAC HD VIA WINDOWS 10

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Level 1

13 points

ACCESS DATA ON OLD MAC HD VIA WINDOWS 10

Hello -

I bought my first Mac in 1984 - the year it first came out!

I have a 20-year old Power Mac G4 which no longer works.

I would like to access the HFS files on the hard drive, reading it on a Win 10 PC. Now, when I had a backup Win PC die on me, I got a $20 external SATA drive enclosure from Amazon and was able to read and back-up everything on that drive easily.

How do I approach this with the 3.5" Ultra ATA/66 (ATA-5) Mac HD? I know I can use HFS+ Software for Windows (they have a 7-day free trial) by Paragon to read the Mac files.

But my question is this: what kind of external case (hopefully, very cheap as I may never use it again) would I need to get in which this Mac drive would work and connect by USB to my Win 10 PC?

Any help would be most appreciated.

Bob Akmens

COL USA (RET)

Posted on Sep 7, 2019 6:03 PM

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Answer 1

Jeff

Level 6

12,316 points

Sep 8, 2019 7:59 PM in response to DRBOBA

Solving the hardware connection issue doesn't solve the other problem. A Windows 10 PC will not recognize the HFS or HFS+ formatted Mac hard drive and will prompt you to format it. You need a software solution to be able to read the drive's contents. Some years ago, I used a program called MacDrive on a Window XP computer that enabled me to read Mac-formatted flash drives. Here's the current version (MacDrive 10) for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, and 7 that should work for you. It retails for $49.99.

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