MacDrive

I came across a very valuable application the other day. It is called MacDrive (the latest version is 7) by MediaFour. This software allows you to read partitions formatted with Mac file systems on your Windows based PC. The standard HFS file system native to Mac computers cannot be read by Windows PC at all. Your Windows PC will see the HFS partition as unallocated.

Well, being a computer repair technician, all of my friends call me when their computers stop working. So this day, I had a Mac hard drive in my hands, and a friend of mine needed data recovery performed on it. His MacBook was no longer able to read this drive and he had 50GB of music on it that he had to have!!

I don't have a Mac, and I have never really used one to any great length. I used Google to see if there were any applications that I could use to alow me to view files on an HFS formatted drive. Good old Google found me MacDrive. I downloaded the trial version, installed it, and sure enough I could see all of his data right from "My Computer" in Windows Vista. I was able to pull his music from the failing hard drive successfully without ever needing a Mac.

I purchased the MacDrive software and I recommend that all computer support techs purchase this software. It works just as advertised and is very inexpensive. It saved the day for my friend.