How to read HFS+ on Windows for Free

The following guide will show you how to read HFS+ on Windows for free. A lot of people don’t know this but its actually very easy and it works excellently well.

When Apple designed its Boot Camp software, to help you run Windows OS on Apple hardware, it included built-in HFS+ drivers for Windows. These drivers will mount your Mac hard drives in Windows Explorer and give you read access (but no write access). If you don’t need to write any files to your Mac hard drives, using them is a free and relatively pain-free solution.

While the HFS+ drivers are normally packaged as part of Apple’s Boot Camp Assistant software, you can download them separately below:

DOWNLOAD: HFS+ Drives 4.0.2.0

The above download is a ZIP file; open the file in Windows by double-clicking it. Once opened, double-click the “Add_AppleHFS.reg” file. This will add the Boot Camp drivers to your Windows registry.

Next, open either the “For 32-bit Windows” or “For 64-bit Windows” folder, depending on your copy of Windows. (To find out whether your copy of Windows is 32-bit or 64-bit, click on the Start Menu, and then right-click on “My Computer” and go to “Properties”.) Inside these folders are two device driver files.

Copy these two files to C:\Windows\System32\drivers. This will install the actual drivers into Windows; reboot your computer afterwards. Once Windows has restarted, your Mac hard drives will be mounted, and you will be able to read files from them properly.

We have tested this patch to work with Windows 7 and Windows 8. You must not have Paragon HFS+ or MacDrive installed on your Computer for it to work as their drivers and this method conflict. To uninstall Apple’s HFS+ drivers, delete the two driver files from C:\Windows\System32\drivers. Restart your computer. Then, double-click on the “Remove_AppleHFS.reg” file to remove the drivers from your Windows registry.