I need to read an APFS USB drive in Windows. I found this similar question on superuser. But the provided solutions are costly (50$ or more). Is there a free alternative?
I need to mount APFS-formatted disks on Windows at work, and we use this driver: https://www.apfsaware.com/. It usually works in most cases.
Checked out APFS Aware. It's actually a demo version now. $35 to unlock it's functionality.
So whilst that is a bit cheaper than the $50 dollars for macdrive or Paragons tool sets, you get a lot more for that $50.
APFS Aware didn't work for me at all in demo mode, certainly not going to drop $35 on something so much less supported or featured than the larger commercial solutions.
Linux reader worked for me to read the drive and see what's there, but there's no copy function and these days Bootcamp drivers can't be used with windows 10 or 11.
My search for a decent sub $50 HFS/APFS read/write solution continues.
Thank you for the information. I attempted to use Linux Reader, even though its homepage mentioned that connecting a physical disk (as opposed to a disk image) might not be successful. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me, so I'm now considering commercial solutions.
Using a third party driver to read an APFS volume is fine, however, I would avoid writing to an APFS volume using a third party driver since you risk corrupting the file system and risking data loss. Apple only recently released the APFS file system documentation so be wary of writing to APFS volumes.
What's the best free software for accessing APFS volumes on Windows?
