Weird HFS drive in Windows 7 problem...

[peanutismint]

Apologies if this isn't really Boot Camp related but I thought this the nearest fit to ask....

I'm back to using my Windows 7 machine while my Macbook Pro is in repair. I have connected my 2TB external drive to it which is formatted in HFS+.

Last night, my Windows machine read all of the HFS+ files perfectly - I spent all night watching videos from the hard drive. Today, however, when I connected the external hard drive I was given the error message 'The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.'

Any ideas why my machine would read my Mac hard disk last night but not today??

 

[Intell]

Was it properly ejected?

 

[peanutismint]

I don't think I ejected it - I was watching a video in Boxee and I clicked 'suspend machine'....so I guess it suspended......??

Could that be what has happened? i.e. not the Windows/Mac problem but the 'didn't eject hard drive' problem? If so, how do I repair it?

I always try to eject the disks but sometimes if I forget it throws up an error in OS X - doesn't seem to break anything though.......

 

[Intell]

Mac OS X supports the journaling function of HFS+. I don't think any Windows HFS+ drivers do. That could be why your drive is not recovering itself and why not ejecting the drive may not effect Mac as much. My suggestion is to use a Mac OS X machine to attempt to repair it.

 

[Quad5Ny]

Are you sure you have HFS+ drivers installed on your Windows machine?

 

[peanutismint]

Yep I'm sure MacDrive is installed, like I said the machine saw all my files fine before this happened.

I'll wait til my Mac's back from the shop and try again then.

Thanks guys -

 

[Quad5Ny]

If your running Win7 x64 you could try the Read-Only HFS+ driver extracted from Boot Camp 4.0.1 (I use it on all my Windows PC's).

How to Install Apple HFS+ Driver:

1. Uninstall MacDrive
2. Copy AppleHFS.sys & AppleMNT.sys to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\
3. Merge Add_AppleHFS.reg
4. Restart

How to Remove Apple HFS+ Driver:

1. Browse to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\
2. Rename AppleHFS.sys & AppleMNT.sys to AppleHFS.sy_ & AppleMNT.sy_
3. Restart
4. Browse to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\
5. Delete AppleHFS.sy_ & AppleMNT.sy_
6. Merge Remove_AppleHFS.reg

 

[peanutismint]

Great, thanks, I am running x64 Win7 so will give it a try... but even if it does work, still doesn't explain how it was working before!

 

[coolnote]

Hi all, my name is Andrew, I'm new to this forum, have been using a Mac for the last 5 months and really enjoying the change!

I'm having a similar problem with a boot camp installation. Here's the related info:

1) I run OSX Lion + Bootcamp/W7 on a 2011 Macbook Air 13".
2) I have installed Paragon HFS+ in Windows.
3) I have tried different external drives, both USB 2.0 and Firewire 800.
4) I have partitioned as a single HFS+ partition, as several HFS+ partition, as several HFS+ partition plus NTFS as the first partition, as several HFS+ partitions plus NTFS as the last partition.

In all cases, I did the partitioning and formatting in OSX.

When I boot into Windows 7, all the partitions are healthy and visible. I can read and write files to them.

When I reboot into either Windows 7 or OSX, the first HFS+ partition is unmountable. I'm explicit here about first HFS+ partition - if I only have one HFS+ partition, it's messed up, if I have several, it's always the first one. Multiple boots into Windows 7 does not corrupt successive HFS+ partitions in a multiple partition setup, it's always just the first one.

I tried putting in a sacrificial 128MB of unallocated space in front of the first HFS+ partition - no help.

If I use FAT32 partitions in place of the HFS+ partitions, no problems.

It does not appear to really corrupt the contents, since I can recover the partition using "Repair Disk" in the OSX Disk Utility. It notes "Volume header needs minor repair", the comes up with "Invalid volume file count", "Invalid volume directory count", and "Invalid volume free block count". Files seem to be fine afterward.

It's interesting to note that this does not happen (THANKFULLY!) to the OSX HFS+ partition on my boot drive that I have partitioned along with Bootcamp. That sort of puzzles me as to what the possibilities could be, but I'm also fairly new to trying to troubleshoot journaling file systems.

Help appreciated!

Regards, Andrew.

 

[coolnote]

I tried the same thing using my Windows 7 laptop which does not have Paragon installed and it does not hose my partitions. Just uninstalled Paragon HFS+ on Bootcamp and the first test looks good, will try a few more combinations.

Between yesterday and then a late night tonight, a lot of wasted time on a commercial software product...!