How to use HFS formatted pen drive in Windows 7?

Question

I recently used disk utility in my mac book pro to format my 8 GB pen drive to install OS X. After that I formatted my pen drive from disk utility as FAT32 so that I would be able to use it in windows. But in windows the pen drive does not show up. When I right click on my computer and click manage and then disk management, the pen drive is listed there, but it doesn't show up in the explorer and I cant use it. I tried to do many things but I'm still not being able to use it in windows though I can use it in Mac OS X. Could anyone help? Thanks.

Answer 1

In Windows, in Disk Management, right-click any of the partitions on the drive and click "Delete Partition". Make sure you do this for any partition on the drive until they all are gone. Then right-click and click "Create Partition". Create a FAT32 partition and make it fill the whole space.

Now your flash drive (thumb drive or whatever you call it) can be used on any computer.

Answer 2

Use HFS Explorer to show your HFS partition in Windows.

Answer 3

I use MacDrive 7. it's not free though. There are a few free ones on the web. Google for "HFS+ Explorer"

Answer 4

Windows is very fussy about partitioning, and what it expects. I have always found it better on the Mac, to just partition it as a single Fat16 partition. Fat32 vs Fat16 for a 8 Gb drive is not going to be that much of a significant difference.

Then, if you want to reformat it as a Fat32 partition when it's visible on the Windows side, go ahead.

Answer 5

Have you tried assigning a drive letter in Disk Management?

You can use this tutorial to see how to do that. Just click "Add..." in stead of "Change..." in figure 3.

Answer 6

use Disk Management to delete all partitions, then create a new partition and format with FAT32.