Accessing mac drives

[MBP*]

How do I go about accessing a Mac formatted drive (external) on a Windows machine?

 

[markboston]

you need a HFS driver. check out macdrive. apple used to include a HFS driver in bootcamp but i guess they don't anymore.

 

[maflynn]

Windows is unable to read HFS+ partitions, so you need a driver to allow the OS to access it. MacDrive is one such app (maybe the only one), but if your Mac uses FileVault to encrypt the partition then even that won't work since your data is encrypted.

 

[saturnotaku]

Windows is unable to read HFS+ partitions

Boot Camp Windows Support Software installs a driver that allows for read-only access to HFS+ partitions. You only need 3rd-party software for the ability to write to that file system.

 

[maflynn]

Boot Camp Windows Support Software installs a driver that allows for read-only access to HFS+ partitions. You only need 3rd-party software for the ability to write to that file system.

Correct, but the OP stated a windows machine, and not his mac so that being the case he'll need some third party software.

 

[chrisrand]

How do I go about accessing a Mac formatted drive (external) on a Windows machine?

As the others have stated, if this is a Boot Camp installation of Windows, then drivers should be installed with the system, if not you can download drivers from here

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1720

The other option is to use a commercial solution like MacDrive which will give you full read write access as well as useful tools like restoring a DMG to USB and repairing HFS partitions.

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

There is another option, but it is not as full featured and simple as MacDrive is to use. Its called TransMac and does read write to HFS partitions as well as DMG and ISO files, but not in the same way as MacDrive does by integrating into Windows Explorer.

http://www.acutesystems.com/scrtm.htm