Gone are those days of CDs and DVDs when you would load the CD/DVD with content, physically mount it on your PC and then play it. ‘Tis the time of ISO mounters that make the entire process smooth by simply copying the content of the CDs/DVDs and then easily transfer and back it up to another destination.

However, these are in ISO, IMG, or BIN formats and need special tools to open the files. If you have the right software handy, you can launch the ISO file formats in virtual CD/DVDs drives to extract its contents. Those working with Microsoft 8 and above already have access to integrated ISO mounting software.

• Partition Magic. Partition Magic a reliable partition manager for Mac is geared with all those features which are needed for the safety and security of your drive. With Partition Magic you can mix or resize the partitions, it lets you arrange data, create storage space, modify or edit partitions, perform multitasking, preview, and delete.
• Free download, install and run the hard disk formatting software. Right-click a partition on the disk you want to format and select “Format Partition”. Set the partition label, cluster size and file system as you like, and click “OK”. Begin to format the hard disk by clicking “Apply” in the main interface.

There are also two other ways to do so — the first is by opening up Disk Utility and going to File - Open Disk Image. The second way is by opening up a Terminal window and typing something similar to the following: hdiutil mount filename.iso. Did this really require us to write up a tip?

But, if you are looking for advanced features or are still using a lower Microsoft OS version, here are some of the best free ISO mounting software you can lay your hands on.

PowerISO

This robust ISO mounting software is perfect for creating images on CDs/DVDs. This further helps you to create ISO image files or carry out different functions including mounting, within the built-in optical drive. It’s compatible with nearly all kinds of CD/DVD image file formats that include ISO formats.

Features:

• It allows you to open and remove ISO file in just one click.
• Option to burn ISO files to CDs/DVDs/BluRay discs, burn BluRay files, and create Audio CDs, Video DVDs, and more.
• Facilitates burning Audio CDs from different formats like BIN, MP3, APE, etc., and rip the audio CDs to the same formats.
• It helps you to create and edit ISO/BIN image files.
• It allows you to launch ISO file using the built-in virtual drive.

Option to create bootable USB drive, CD/DVD discs, and ISO files, or to change image files between ISO, BIN, or other formats, are among its other major features.

Price: Priced at $29.95.

DAEMON Tools Lite

Those looking for a reliable ISO mounting software can safely depend on this tool which also serves as a great disc imaging application. You can mount images, connect discs to different file formats like ESO, APE, MDX, etc., store all your preferred image files handy, and more.

Features:

• Helps you to launch all familiar variants of disc image files and imitates a wide range of disc files, up to 4 DT + SCSI + HDD devices.
• It allows you to define higher-level options during the process of image creation, create your won image from files and folders, make a virtual Audio CD, convert and store images, and more.
• Stores your files by running VHD backups and in TrueCrypt holders. use iso
• It offers the option to burn images to the optical disc, burn data and make an audio CD, emulates data and partition details, and more.
• It helps you to create a bootable image of the OS to the USB drive, encrypts your private data on a USB stick, or to change from optical discs to USB drives.

Moreover, it allows you to link to iSCI targets and use isolated images as local ones, increase the number of virtual devices and launch unlimited images, reduce the usage of physical drives and rather burn images to save time, and so on.

Price: Free version available; Upgrade priced at $29.99.

WinCDEmu

This ISO mounting software allows you to imitate your CDs/DVDs in just a couple of clicks. While it makes mounting ISO images (on optical drives) a breeze, it also allows you to use a loaded ISO image without copying/writing it to an empty disc.

Features:

• It helps you mount different image formats including ISO, IMG, etc. in a single click.
• Available in an exclusive portable version, it’s extremely compact, even less than 2MB.
• It helps you to create ISO images using a pop-up menu in the Windows File Explorer.
• Provides support for a wide range of virtual drives.
• No need to reboot once installed.

Supporting BD/DVD video images, and data, providing a translation in over 20 20 languages, not capturing drive letters when idle, or compatibility with Windows XP and above (both 32-bit and 64- bit versions), are among its other significant features.

Price: Free and open source.

Virtual Clone Drive

This software is perfect for those looking to burn a DVD or an ISO image file to a virtual drive. It allows you to select which file types you want to connect to the application. This can be done on a small Settings tab offering different language options.

Features:

• Lightweight, free, easy to set up, and easy to launch files.
• It allows you to create image files that you can then add to the virtual drive from your hard disk/network drive and finally use it as a regular DVD.
• Eliminates the need for using the primary interface.
• Works with mostly used image formats like ISO, BIN, etc.

Moreover, it also supports close to 8 virtual drives concurrently and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.

Price: Free

Magic Disc

Getting something free is not bad, especially if you have free tools like this. This software helps you create CDs/DVDs easily and use them just like you are using a physical one without even operating the optical drive.

Features:

• It allows you to create up to 15 virtual discs that can be set up like any physical disc, for instance, DVD, audio CD, etc.
• It helps you to create audio series, store them as ISO image files, and play them back just like an audio CD.
• It offers flexible options for mounting, compression, password protection, and so on.

Best of all, this free software unifies with the developer’s pro version of the tool for more advanced functions.

Price: Free.

OSFMount

If you want something to mimic the optical disk drive of Windows, you can use this software for the purpose. It mounts the image files in the Windows platform as if it’s an original disk. This disk image file can be further evaluated with the help of the original disk name.

Features:

• Image files are automatically mounted in read-only status. This helps the physical image files to remain unchanged.
• Provides support for the disk image file to be mounted as read/write in the “write cache” system.
• Facilitates creating RAM disks which means mounting a disk into RAM that increases the speed compared to hard disk.
• Supports mounting CD image files in ISO format.

With a simple and easy to use interface, and with the option to allocate a drive letter or select drive variant, this is one of the best free ISO mounting software around.

Price: Freeware.

Free ISO Burner

This software makes the entire burning of ISO image files process much easier. It mounts the ISO and CD/DVD images to CD-R/RW, Blu-ray Disc, and more. Best of all, it does not need you to launch any virtual drives mimicking CDs/DVDs, but rather write the data straight away.

Features:

• Straightforward and easy to use with all intricate settings hidden.
• Option to choose the drivers, define the disk volume, choose the burn speed, and adjust the size of the burn cache.
• It allows you to terminate the burning process.
• Supports bootable CD image files.
• Compact, requires no installation and is versatile.

Moreover, it allows you to conclude a disc (where the data and music are already present) by choosing from the primary interface, and being portable it can also operate from a single USB driver.

Price: Free

ISO Workshop

If you are looking for software that can burn ISO files, this can be the right choice for you. This software also burns and emulates CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs.

Features:

• It helps you create regular or bootable ISO in various formats.
• It allows you to burn ISO files or any other disc image files to CD/DVD/BD.
• Option to search for and get files from different disc images.
• Lets you emulate any CD or DVD to ISO or BIN formats.
• Offers the option to change different disc image files to ISO or BIN formats.
• It allows you to make CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc volumes on the spot.

Moreover, it features a responsive user interface that allows you to create ISO images, remove files from discs, generates backup for discs, and more. It’s also compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32 and 64).

Price: Free

gBurner Virtual Drive

This is another great free ISO mounting software that’s specifically developed to create and manage emulated CD/DVD drives. It helps you to use nearly any CD/DVD image format and that too without burning these images to CD/DVD for smooth access to your preferred content. Just like CD/DVD-ROM, it allows you to run applications, play games, and more.

Features:

• It allows you to create a number of drives, usually up to 16 copied (virtual) drives.
• Increases the speed of your game/application by 200 times compared to traditional CD/DVD drive.
• Mounts and unmounts drives by default and runs automatically as soon as it is launched.

Overall, it offers a simple solution to those who want to mount and unmount CD/DVD drives. Moreover, it occupies very less space of your CPU and PC memory, thus, not getting into the way of the run time of other processes.

Price: Freeware.

WinArchiver Virtual Drive

This free ISO disk image tool is a lightweight software that’s also available for Windows 98 users. Apart from the ability to copy image files from CDs/DVDs, it can also copy prominent archives. You can execute applications or get your hands on the files from a virtual drive without physical CD/DVD drives.

Features:

• The virtual drive runs at a speed that is 200 times faster compared to the conventional CD/DVD ROM drive.
• Ability to mount archives in different formats including ZIP, RAR, etc. as virtual discs on the fly.
• It offers a much easier and quicker way to get hands-on the archived files.
• Option to mount an archive file as a virtual disc and then use the files from the virtual disk.

Best of all it supports almost all the image formats and requires no configuration.

Price: Free

ISODisk

If you want to work with backup issues, operating systems that play CDs, or programs that require physical CD drive, this software is perfect for you.

Features:

• It helps you to mount up to 20 virtual CD/DVD drivers at the same time.
• It allows you to create ISO disk images and lay your hands on the content saved in it just as when you burn files to CDs/DVDs.
• Quickly mounts ISO image files from CD/DVD drives.
• No other virtual drive software needs to be installed.

Moreover, you are allowed to view the files in the Windows Explorer as soon as the archive is mapped to the virtual drive.

Price: Free

Pismo File Mount

This is an extension for your operating system that allows you to manage virtual and user type file formats. It’s a fast and straightforward software that allows several programs to use the content in ISO, ZIP, or Private files. It can also uncover any type of application and user details using the console of the file system.

Features:

• Equipped with a neat and simple interface, it offers you the option to insert files to the list with the help of the drag-and-drop function.
• It’s an easy to use tool that simply requires you to pull the items straight into the main interface and its audit package by default creates a virtual folder in the same place as the actual files.
• It allows you to mount ZIP, CD/DVS images, and even create personal folders to save private data and programs in a password protected holder.

Moreover, it also allows you to mount files on native, portable devices, and use command-line functions. Best of all, it can be used even by beginners.

Price: Free

Conclusion

Just when we thought CD and DVD drives are the ultimate solution, we got the ISO mounters taking things a step forward. The 3^rd party software, especially for those working on Windows 8 and Windows 10 makes it super easy to convert discs and drives into virtual images and help you save the images or make changes to them from your PC storage. This reduces a lot of clutter that’s otherwise caused by the optical discs and are difficult to move from one place to another. So, take your pick from the above list and reduce your efforts on burning files to physical discs.

I find passion in writing Tech articles around Windows PC and softwares

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.

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:

1. 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.
2. Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
3. Select Devices from the top of the software pane.
4. Choose the formatted Mac drive under it.
5. Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
9. 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.)
10. Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
11. 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.

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.

What about Windows 10 read Mac drive? Please read the following sections.

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 you can use on Windows 10 to read files and folders from Mac-formatted drive.

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.

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

HFSExplorer is a good tool to help you read your Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC.

1. Connect the Mac-formatted drive to Windows 10 PC.
2. Run HFSExplorer as administrator.
3. Select File from the menu bar.
4. Choose Load file system from device
5. Click Autodetect to load the connected hard drive.
6. Choose the files & folders you want to view in the HFS+ drive.
7. Click Extract in the graphical window.
8. Select a folder as the destination.
9. Expand the folder to read Mac drive files on a Windows 10 PC.

Attention:

• HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions can all be detected by using HFSExplorer.
• You can also Select a device or Specify device name manually in step 5.

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.

Is there any other hard drive reader for Windows? Of course, yes; please move on.

Choice 2: Apple HFS+ Drivers

Games by jsk. 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.

1. Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
2. Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
3. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
4. Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
5. Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
6. Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
7. Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
8. Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
9. 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.

Free Disk Mounting Software Mac Os

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.

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

Best Free Program For Mounting

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.).

Cd Mount Software Free

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. Best rotation addon wow.

How to format a hard drive? Basically, there are three ways.

Free Disk Mounting Software Mac Download

• 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

Free Disk Mounting Software Mac Free

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.