Is my PC able to boot from my external USB formatted to Mac OS X Extended Journaled?
It works fine on my Mac, but I want to boot from it on my Windows (PC).
14 Answers
Windows can't read or write HFS+J (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) natively. Neither can the Windows installer. So you won't even be able to install Windows onto an HFS+J partition.
Even if you manage to use some other tool to clone/copy a Windows installation onto an HFS+J partition without mangling it, the Windows booting code wouldn't know how to read HFS+J, so it wouldn't be able to boot from it.
There are third-party products like MacDrive that allow Windows to read and write HFS+J partitions, but products like that don't load until later in the boot process, so they don't enable booting from HFS+J.
The best you could do is take that external drive, make sure its low-level partition map format is GPT (GUID Partition Table) as opposed to MBR (Master Boot Record) or Apple Partition Map, and add a FAT or NTFS partition to it (possibly by first making room by shrinking the HFS+J partition using Mac OS X Disk Utility). Then you could install Windows on the FAT or NTFS partition so you can boot Windows from there.
2If you are talking about booting OS X (without illegal mods):
NO WAY (sorry).
If you want to boot another OS: You need a boot manager that understands hfs+. And an operating system on that partition that is compatible with your hardware and understands hfs+. That means no Windows for you. And if you want to boot Linux you're probably better off using ext3,4 or something like that.
Not a good idea.
Why do you want to boot from that partition? Do you just need access to the data?
3Apple's bootloader will allow it. Other than that, for a PC, it requires a custom kernel for Mac OS and possibly an alternate bootloader for your PC, and running Mac OS X on a non-Apple machine is illegal.
1You cannot boot to Mac OS X from a non-Mac, regardless of what the underlying filesystem is. Or, if you're looking to go that way, why do you want to put Windows on a Mac OS X Extended Journaled filesystem?
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