How to Read Mac HFS File on Windows

Free HFS File Explorer for Windows
HFSExplorer is an free Windows application that allows you to read Mac-formatted HFS hard disks and disk images from your Windwos computer. HFSExplorer is designed to read the file systems HFS (Mac OS Standard), HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) and HFSX (Mac OS Extended with case sensitive file names). With HFSExplorer you will be able to browse your Mac volumes with a graphical file system browser, extract files (copy to hard disk), view detailed information about the volume and create disk images from the volume.

HFSExplorer can also read most .dmg disk images created on a Mac, including zlib / bzip2 compressed images and AES-128 encrypted images. It supports the partition schemes Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table and Apple Partition Map natively. Linux and OS X users should in most cases not need HFSExplorer for browsing file systems on devices, since there are native file system drivers available on those systems, but it seems to work fine if you need it. Linux users might find use for opening .dmg files.

How to read Mac HFS file on Windows
Make sure you have Sun's Java SE Runtime Environment version 5.0 or greater (OpenJDK works fine). Second, make sure you have administrator or equivalent privileges if you're going to access physical disks.

Windows users need to download the convenient installer (see the download links below), which will do everything for you. The installer will place two shortcuts to HFSExplorer in its start menu folder. The first, "HFSExplorer", simply opens the application. If you are an administrator running Windows XP or Windows Vista with User Account Control disabled, you will be able to access block devices.

The second shortcut, "Run HFSExplorer in Administrator mode", makes it possible to elevate your privileges. In Windows Vista, this is done with the User Account Control dialog, and in Windows XP a similar but not as fancy dialog is shown to make it possible authenticate as an administrator. If you want to access a partition on the disk of your computer, and you run Windows Vista, you should always start HFSExplorer in "Administrator mode".

Download free HFSExplorer for Windows.
HFSExplorer file size 1.5MB.
HFSExplorer Website