Mac/Win Pick: MacDrive 7

Whether you're an Intel Mac user running BootCamp or a Windows person who needs to access Mac-formatted drives or discs from your PC, MacDrive is an essential utility. Before getting into the couple of very cool new features in version 7, the one sentence rundown of what MacDrive is and what it can do goes a little something like this: with MacDrive installed, just pop a Mac-formatted CD or DVD into your drive or attach a Mac hard disk to your Windows-based PC (or Intel Mac running Windows, of course), and it just shows up, ready to be read from or written to. That's pretty much it. The longer description adds a few more details, so it's time to invoke the "a few more details = bring on the bullet point list" rule that I pretty much live by:

• Mac volumes are differentiated from native volumes in the Windows Explorer with a little apple icon overlaid on top of the disk icon
• MacDrive is an "install and go" program for the most part, but it also offers a control panel to aid in specifying file type mappings and setting preferences such as which volume to show when mounting hybrid CD/DVDs
• Two add-on programs are also part of the deal: a disk formatting and maintenance utility, and a basic Mac CD/DVD burning applet

So that's the gist of it. Version 7 "only" adds three features of note, but they're big ones:

• Works in Vista (as well as XP and Server 2003)
• The disk utility program now lets you diagnose and repair Mac volumes
• Basic DMG archives can be opened

To that last point, we're talking plain vanilla DMG files, meaning forget about it if you have an encrypted DMG or one that throws up a license screen before mounting. DMG files are also mounted as read-only volumes, so that's a little limiting, but on the whole, it's much, much better than nothing.

On the "well, that kind of sucks" side, MacDrive 7 adds one other "feature" of note: activation. Yay! More activation! Yes, it has to connect to tha IntarWebs to see if you're legal and all that, and from the sounds of it, you will likely have to jump through hoops to transfer the product if you ever change machines. Sounds like the folks at Mediafour had some product piracy issues after BootCamp blew up and MacDrive became a very sought-after product, so, naturally, the paying public is the one to suffer the consequences. Par for the course these days, and as you may have guessed, I'm not terribly enamored with this addition, which is the only thing that scuffs up an otherwise very shiny product.

MacDrive 7 is far from free ($49.95 new/$19.95 upgrade), but it's worth every penny if you need the functionality it offers. Grab the (whopping) 5-day trial download and give it a spin for yourself.

Posted at 09:29AM May 18, 2007 by Kevin Schmitt in Software  |  Comments[0]