- It's relatively easy to access Disk Utility after Mac boots up. You can follow these steps to open Disk Utility. You can either find this utility by spotlighting 'disk utility', or you can access it by going to Finder Applications Utilities Disk Utility. Then, you can open Disk Utility and enjoy the features mentioned above. Boot Mac to Disk Utility. Another situation that you want to access Disk Utility is when Mac.
- Open Disk Utility In general, you can just open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. However, if your Mac doesn't start up all the way, or you want to repair the disk your Mac starts up from, open Disk Utility from macOS Recovery.
- Click on your Mac's startup drive in the Disk Utility sidebar. It should be the drive at the top of the sidebar if there are multiple drives. Click First Aid. First Aid will run, checking the health of your Mac's drive. This process could take a little while. Click Disk Utility in the Menu bar. Click Quit Disk Utility.
Now I am using the right disk but the computer doesn't recognize the HD as a location to instal, and I can't access the partitions tab in disk utility to check formatting/re-format. I get the message 'disk utility has lost connection with disk management tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch. Launch the Disk Utility app on your Mac and highlight the hard drive icon under ‘ External' (for external hard drives). If you choose any other drive, the partition option will become unclickable. Now click Partition on the top toolbar. A window that has partition information will pop up.
My Mac Mini w/ Fusion Drive (that's a hard disk and an SSD pretending to be a single volume for better performance) froze and wouldn't boot. Nothing would make it boot normally again. Recovery mode was OK but couldn't erase the boot volume nor mount it via Disk Utility (I just got 'Unable to delete the core storage logical volume'), so reinstalling seemed impossible.
Fortunately, I figured out how to do it, using some help from a StackExchange post I found. See below for the details.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/DiskUtilityErase-56a5d5315f9b58b7d0dea168.jpg "Can t access disk utility macbook pro")
Mac foundation nc20. The magic incantation that fixed it was inspired by instructions I found here:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136590/how-can-i-delete-a-partition-corestorage-logical-volume-from-the-terminal
Here are the steps:
- Boot the recovery volume, which will take you to an OS X Utilities page that shows four options: 'Restore From Time Machine Backup', 'Reinstall OS X', 'Get Help Online', and 'Disk Utility'. If you have gotten to this article you have probably already been into Disk Utility a few times already without success, so don't open Disk Utility.
- From the Utilities menu of the 'OS X Utilities' app, open Terminal. (Maximize the terminal window that opens so it's easier to see the output of the next step.)
- Run diskutil cs list . Using the mouse, copy the long alphanumeric string that's on the third line of output after 'Logical Volume Group'. That's the Logical Volume Group's universally unique identifier, a.k.a. its 'lvgUUID'.
- LAST WARNING: FROM HERE ON OUT THIS DELETES ALL OF THE DATA ON THE HFS+ LOGICAL VOLUME (but it doesn't delete the recovery partition).
Run diskutil cs delete FOO-BAR-BIZ-BAZ, where FOO-BAR-BIZ-BAZ was your lvgUUID. This deletes the logical volume group. diskutil will print things about erasing the physical partitions that made up the logical volumes, which in my case were /dev/disk0s2 (a 931GB partition on the internal hard disk) and /dev/disk1s2 (a 113GB partition on the internal SSD). Pay attention to the names of the devices that it just liberated on your system, since you'll use those device names in the next step.
At this point you have two empty HFS+ partitions that are not a Fusion drive anymore, so you'll want to rebuild the LVG from those two physical partitions. - Run this: diskutil cs create'Macintosh HD'/dev/disk0s2/dev/disk1s2 and adjust the /dev/. stuff to include the partitions that diskutil said it erased & mounted in the prior step.
On my Mac Mini it took about a minute to finish.
At this point if you run diskutil cs list you should see just a Logical Volume Group and as many Physical Volumes as you added (which is two in my case, disk0s2 and disk1s2), without any Logical Volumes yet. - Quit Terminal.app and run Disk Utility from the main 'OS X Utilities' app.
Disk Utility should show 'Fusion Drive' without any partitions in it, which is expected since we just created the Logical Volume Group without any Logical Volumes in it. - Select the Fusion Drive and run First Aid on it.
First Aid will immediately create a Logical Volume and format it, leaving one big partition of type'OS X Extended (Journaled)' named 'Untitled'.
Now you're free to do whatever you want with this empty disk. In my case, I erased it and created a new partition named 'Untitled' of type 'OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)' since I want full-disk encryption.
(I tried to call it 'Macintosh HD' during the erase step, but Disk Utility failed to erase the disk and complained that name was invalid, so I just left it as 'Untitled', erased the disk, and then renamed it by selecting the Untitled volume in the left-hand-side list of devices, then clicking on the right-hand-side pane where the name Untitled was shown and editing it there.)
After this, I quit out of Disk Utility, and ran the 'Reinstall Install OS X' app. That does a network install which first required me to log in with my Apple ID and then downloaded the install files.
Summary :
If you connect a drive formatted in Mac to a Windows PC, you'll be prompted to format it before use. That is to say, you are not allowed to view anything saved on it before formatting. But the question is: if you click Format disk, your data will be ruined. This post from MiniTool will introduce several useful ways to help you with that; please read carefully.
Quick Navigation :
Can You Read Mac Drive on Windows
Many people doubt that whether they can read Mac drive on Windows. Some took action: they removed the drive from Mac and connected it to a Windows PC properly. But after connecting the Mac-formatted drive to Windows, a prompt window will pop up automatically on the screen, saying that they need to format the disk before use.
Don't Format the Drive
You should click Cancel instead of Format disk when seeing this prompt. Why? That is simply because the formatting action will damage your data saved on that drive. Is there any other way to read a Mac-formatted drive on Windows? Sure, it is; some effective ways used by other users will be shown to you later on this page.
What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do
Some users said they clicked on the Format disk button by mistake when seeing the prompt window mentioned above; they were wondering if there's any way to help them recover a formatted hard drive. Luckily, the answer is yes.
What does disk formatting mean?
Formatting a hard disk/drive refers to delete all the file & folders save on a drive and set a certain file system for it. The formatting action is performed to prepare a data storage device (including hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, and SD card) for initial use. Two of the most obvious results of formatting a hard disk are: deleting data and changing file system.
Besides, there are also other benefits of disk formatting:
- Get more space on disk.
- Solve disk problems caused by soft failure.
- Improve disk/system performance greatly.
- And so on.
Do you know how to improve Windows 10 performance effectively?
It's necessary to improve Windows 10 performance effectively since various problems will occur inevitably on a system that has been used for a long time.
Recover Formatted Hard Drive
The first and the most important thing to do after formatting a hard drive is to recover precious data from hard drive. MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be a good data recovery assistant: it's clean, safe, and professional. Please free download the trial edition to experience this data recovery tool first before you decide to buy it; after that, double click on the setup program to finish installing the software on your Windows computer, on which the Mac hard drives are formatted.
Follow this guide to recover data from Mac formatted external hard drives:
- Click Start now at the end of installation to launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. You can also open it by double clicking on the software icon.
- Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
- Select Hard Disk Drive from the pane on your left hand side.
- Choose the formatted Mac drive from the pane on your right hand side.
- Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button at the bottom right corner.
- The full scan will be started at once; more and more files and folders will be found during the scan. Please make sure the Mac hard drive is always connected to your computer.
- Browse the found items carefully to decide which files are needed and which are not; add a checkmark into the square box in from of all the files you want to recover. If you can't confirm, go to view the content before recovery by clicking Preview.
- Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
- Select a storage path in the pop-up window to store the files waiting to be recovered; please make sure it has enough free space left. (You shouldn't select the original Mac-formatted drive as the storage location in order to avoid secondary damage.)
- Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
- Then, wait until all the files saved on Mac hard drive have been recovered successfully to appointed place. A prompt window will show up to inform you of the recovery result.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a great tool for recovering formatted SD card or broken/corrupted USB stick. The recovery steps are basically the same expect that you should select Removable Disk Drive from the left sidebar as mentioned in step 3.
After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you've got back all the files you need.
Windows 10 Read Mac Drive
Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?
A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I'll introduce some of the useful software to you one by one in this part; please choose a proper hard drive reader yourself.
Choice 1: HFSExplorer
HFSExplorer is completely free; it's a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.
Mac Disk Utility For Windows
What does HFSExplorer allow you to do?
- Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
- Check the volume related information.
- Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
- Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
- Create disk images from the volume on Mac.
The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.
Attention!
You need to install Java first if you don't have it on your PC since it's required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).
HFSExplorer: Launch error
No Java runtime environment found. HFSExplorer cannot function without Java.
Press 'OK' to open up http://www.java.com where you can download a Java runtime environment for your system.
You should just click OK as prompted to download & install proper runtime environment when seeing the window above.
How to use HFSExplorer to read Mac hard drive on Windows:
- Connect the Mac-formatted external hard drive to the Windows computer properly.
- Launch HFSExplorer as administrator on your computer.
- Select File from the menu bar at the top of the opening window.
- Choose Load file system from device from the submenu (you can also press Ctrl + L directly).
- Click on the Autodetect button to automatically detects HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions on your system (you can also Select a device or Specify device name manually).
- Pick out the files and folders you want to view and click Extract.
- Choose a folder as the destination place to store the items selected in the previous step (they'll be copied immediately).
- Expand the target folder to read files on your Windows PC.
If the connected external hard drive is not showing up on PC, you can't detect it in step 5. You must make it appear in Windows first.
Mac foundation nc20. The magic incantation that fixed it was inspired by instructions I found here:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/136590/how-can-i-delete-a-partition-corestorage-logical-volume-from-the-terminal
Here are the steps:
- Boot the recovery volume, which will take you to an OS X Utilities page that shows four options: 'Restore From Time Machine Backup', 'Reinstall OS X', 'Get Help Online', and 'Disk Utility'. If you have gotten to this article you have probably already been into Disk Utility a few times already without success, so don't open Disk Utility.
- From the Utilities menu of the 'OS X Utilities' app, open Terminal. (Maximize the terminal window that opens so it's easier to see the output of the next step.)
- Run diskutil cs list . Using the mouse, copy the long alphanumeric string that's on the third line of output after 'Logical Volume Group'. That's the Logical Volume Group's universally unique identifier, a.k.a. its 'lvgUUID'.
- LAST WARNING: FROM HERE ON OUT THIS DELETES ALL OF THE DATA ON THE HFS+ LOGICAL VOLUME (but it doesn't delete the recovery partition).
Run diskutil cs delete FOO-BAR-BIZ-BAZ, where FOO-BAR-BIZ-BAZ was your lvgUUID. This deletes the logical volume group. diskutil will print things about erasing the physical partitions that made up the logical volumes, which in my case were /dev/disk0s2 (a 931GB partition on the internal hard disk) and /dev/disk1s2 (a 113GB partition on the internal SSD). Pay attention to the names of the devices that it just liberated on your system, since you'll use those device names in the next step.
At this point you have two empty HFS+ partitions that are not a Fusion drive anymore, so you'll want to rebuild the LVG from those two physical partitions. - Run this: diskutil cs create'Macintosh HD'/dev/disk0s2/dev/disk1s2 and adjust the /dev/. stuff to include the partitions that diskutil said it erased & mounted in the prior step.
On my Mac Mini it took about a minute to finish.
At this point if you run diskutil cs list you should see just a Logical Volume Group and as many Physical Volumes as you added (which is two in my case, disk0s2 and disk1s2), without any Logical Volumes yet. - Quit Terminal.app and run Disk Utility from the main 'OS X Utilities' app.
Disk Utility should show 'Fusion Drive' without any partitions in it, which is expected since we just created the Logical Volume Group without any Logical Volumes in it. - Select the Fusion Drive and run First Aid on it.
First Aid will immediately create a Logical Volume and format it, leaving one big partition of type'OS X Extended (Journaled)' named 'Untitled'.
Now you're free to do whatever you want with this empty disk. In my case, I erased it and created a new partition named 'Untitled' of type 'OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)' since I want full-disk encryption.
(I tried to call it 'Macintosh HD' during the erase step, but Disk Utility failed to erase the disk and complained that name was invalid, so I just left it as 'Untitled', erased the disk, and then renamed it by selecting the Untitled volume in the left-hand-side list of devices, then clicking on the right-hand-side pane where the name Untitled was shown and editing it there.)
After this, I quit out of Disk Utility, and ran the 'Reinstall Install OS X' app. That does a network install which first required me to log in with my Apple ID and then downloaded the install files.
Summary :
If you connect a drive formatted in Mac to a Windows PC, you'll be prompted to format it before use. That is to say, you are not allowed to view anything saved on it before formatting. But the question is: if you click Format disk, your data will be ruined. This post from MiniTool will introduce several useful ways to help you with that; please read carefully.
Quick Navigation :
Can You Read Mac Drive on Windows
Many people doubt that whether they can read Mac drive on Windows. Some took action: they removed the drive from Mac and connected it to a Windows PC properly. But after connecting the Mac-formatted drive to Windows, a prompt window will pop up automatically on the screen, saying that they need to format the disk before use.
Don't Format the Drive
You should click Cancel instead of Format disk when seeing this prompt. Why? That is simply because the formatting action will damage your data saved on that drive. Is there any other way to read a Mac-formatted drive on Windows? Sure, it is; some effective ways used by other users will be shown to you later on this page.
What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do
Some users said they clicked on the Format disk button by mistake when seeing the prompt window mentioned above; they were wondering if there's any way to help them recover a formatted hard drive. Luckily, the answer is yes.
What does disk formatting mean?
Formatting a hard disk/drive refers to delete all the file & folders save on a drive and set a certain file system for it. The formatting action is performed to prepare a data storage device (including hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, and SD card) for initial use. Two of the most obvious results of formatting a hard disk are: deleting data and changing file system.
Besides, there are also other benefits of disk formatting:
- Get more space on disk.
- Solve disk problems caused by soft failure.
- Improve disk/system performance greatly.
- And so on.
Do you know how to improve Windows 10 performance effectively?
It's necessary to improve Windows 10 performance effectively since various problems will occur inevitably on a system that has been used for a long time.
Recover Formatted Hard Drive
The first and the most important thing to do after formatting a hard drive is to recover precious data from hard drive. MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be a good data recovery assistant: it's clean, safe, and professional. Please free download the trial edition to experience this data recovery tool first before you decide to buy it; after that, double click on the setup program to finish installing the software on your Windows computer, on which the Mac hard drives are formatted.
Follow this guide to recover data from Mac formatted external hard drives:
- Click Start now at the end of installation to launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. You can also open it by double clicking on the software icon.
- Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
- Select Hard Disk Drive from the pane on your left hand side.
- Choose the formatted Mac drive from the pane on your right hand side.
- Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button at the bottom right corner.
- The full scan will be started at once; more and more files and folders will be found during the scan. Please make sure the Mac hard drive is always connected to your computer.
- Browse the found items carefully to decide which files are needed and which are not; add a checkmark into the square box in from of all the files you want to recover. If you can't confirm, go to view the content before recovery by clicking Preview.
- Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
- Select a storage path in the pop-up window to store the files waiting to be recovered; please make sure it has enough free space left. (You shouldn't select the original Mac-formatted drive as the storage location in order to avoid secondary damage.)
- Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
- Then, wait until all the files saved on Mac hard drive have been recovered successfully to appointed place. A prompt window will show up to inform you of the recovery result.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a great tool for recovering formatted SD card or broken/corrupted USB stick. The recovery steps are basically the same expect that you should select Removable Disk Drive from the left sidebar as mentioned in step 3.
After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you've got back all the files you need.
Windows 10 Read Mac Drive
Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?
A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I'll introduce some of the useful software to you one by one in this part; please choose a proper hard drive reader yourself.
Choice 1: HFSExplorer
HFSExplorer is completely free; it's a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.
Mac Disk Utility For Windows
What does HFSExplorer allow you to do?
- Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
- Check the volume related information.
- Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
- Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
- Create disk images from the volume on Mac.
The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.
Attention!
You need to install Java first if you don't have it on your PC since it's required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).
HFSExplorer: Launch error
No Java runtime environment found. HFSExplorer cannot function without Java.
Press 'OK' to open up http://www.java.com where you can download a Java runtime environment for your system.
You should just click OK as prompted to download & install proper runtime environment when seeing the window above.
How to use HFSExplorer to read Mac hard drive on Windows:
- Connect the Mac-formatted external hard drive to the Windows computer properly.
- Launch HFSExplorer as administrator on your computer.
- Select File from the menu bar at the top of the opening window.
- Choose Load file system from device from the submenu (you can also press Ctrl + L directly).
- Click on the Autodetect button to automatically detects HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions on your system (you can also Select a device or Specify device name manually).
- Pick out the files and folders you want to view and click Extract.
- Choose a folder as the destination place to store the items selected in the previous step (they'll be copied immediately).
- Expand the target folder to read files on your Windows PC.
If the connected external hard drive is not showing up on PC, you can't detect it in step 5. You must make it appear in Windows first.
Access Disk Utility On Mac Startup
Is there any other hard drive reader for Windows? Of course, yes; please move on.
Choice 2: Apple HFS+ Drivers
Another way to access HFS + files in Windows 10 for free is installing Apple HFS + drivers.
Steps to read Mac drives on PC with Apple HFS + drivers:
First, you should make sure you don't have Paragon or MacDrive (the hard drive readers I will talk about later) on your Windows computer. If you do, please remove them now.
Second, you should download the correct Windows driver package to your local drive.
Third, you should configure your Windows as follow.
- Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
- Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
- Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
- Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
- Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
- Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
- Restart your computer to make changes take effect.
Fourth, you should connect the Mac-formatted drive to your PC -> open File Explorer (also called Windows Explorer) -> locate that drive under This PC -> access files you want.
Choice 3: HFS+ for Windows
Though the Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a paid hard driver reader, you'll love it after using.
What can Paragon HFS+ for Windows do for you?
- The speed is fast and the performance is stable.
- The Mac file systems are integrated into Windows File Explorer.
- It provides full read and write access to Mac drives formatted with HFS, HFS +, and HFSX (just like other drives in Windows).
- It allows Windows programs to read from or write to the Mac-formatted drive on Windows.
- There are additional features that worth the cost.
How much does it cost?
The Paragon HFS+ for Windows is sold on the official website for $19.95 with a single seat license; $49.95 with one license worked on 3 PCs.
If you don't want to spend money in reading Mac drive on Windows, you should download the trial edition; it is free for use for 10 days. You can access, copy files from or to the Mac drive during this period; it's enough.
Choice 4: MacDrive
If your Mac drive is formatted with APFS (Apple File System), you won't be able to read Mac hard drive on Windows because there are no free apps designed for it. But you have many choices of paid applications to access & edit Mac drive files on Windows; MacDrive is a popular one designed by Mediafour.
Merits of MacDrive:
- It is used to help users read data from and write data to Mac disks from Windows directly.
- You can read both APFS and HFS+ drives in File Explorer.
- It allows you to create and partition Mac disks on your Windows.
- A graphical interface is offered for Mac-formatted drives verification, format, and repair.
- It's a trusted solution which can date back to 1996.
Can T Access Disk Utility Mac Os
The only drawback of MacDrive seems to be the selling price is higher than some similar tools. You need to pay $49.99 for the Standard version or $69.99 for the Pro version.
Is it worth the price? Yes, if you have such needs; it also includes unique features like support for Mac-formatted RAID disks.
Choice 5: Paragon APFS for Windows
Paragon also designed an APFS for Windows app for reading APFS Mac drive on Windows; it is considered as one of the main competitors of MacDrive.
Features of Paragon APFS for Windows:
- It provides read and write access to Mac drives formatted with APFS.
- It also allows you to access and edit compressed and cloned files (you can only access the encrypted volumes without making any changes).
- It gives support to auto-mounting at start-up; the partition tools of MacDrive are not included in this app.
The biggest disadvantage of Paragon APFS for Windows when compared to MacDrive is the HFS+ support. The biggest advantage of Paragon APFS for Windows over MacDrive is the price – it costs only $49.95 for one license worked on 3 PCs.
Of course, there are many other tools available for you to read Mac drives on Windows (10/8/7, etc.).
Bonus Tip
You can format your Mac hard drive to exFAT, which supports both Windows and Mac OS X. In this way, you can get full read and write access to exFAT drives on Windows without any additional third-party software.
The only thing you need to worry is that the data on Mac drives will be removed. So you need to turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery as mentioned in part 1 to recover the files you need after formatting.
How to format a hard drive? Basically, there are three ways.
- Right click on the drive in File Explorer -> choose Format.
- OpenDisk Management -> right click on the target drive -> choose Format.
- Format Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard – a professional disk manager.
Final Thoughts
Though you can't access a Mac-formatted drive on a Windows computer directly, there are useful ways and tools to help you read Mac drive on Windows easily. Please just follow the steps mentioned above and choose the tool depending on your needs.
