Sarah Perez: I spend most of my time on a Mac these days, but I still have a few Windows machines that I need to regularly interact with. While there are ways to access Windows NTFS-formatted drives using a Mac, sometimes what you actually need to do is the opposite -- access a Mac HFS-formatted external USB drive using a Windows machine. Fortunately, there's a solid solution to this problem. Unfortunately, it's not cheap. MacDrive is a piece of software that you can install on virtually any Windows workstation-class machine: Windows 7 (32-bit & 64-bit), Vista (32-bit & 64-bit), and XP (32-bit), though they admit that Windows 7 support is still a work in progress. Once installed, your Windows machine can read from and write to Mac HFS-formatted drives with no additional input from you - just plug it in, and start working. You can even burn CDs and DVDs formatted for Macs.
Though MacDrive sells for a relatively steep $50, if you regularly need to interact with Mac users it is well worth the price. And if you'd simply like to try it, or have an emergency situation, there is a time-limited 5 day demo version available.
Tags: demo version, demo-version, DemoVersion, external usb drive, external-usb-drive, ExternalUsbDrive, formatted, mac, macdrive, macs, windows machine, windows-machine, WindowsMachine
