How to Scan Drives from Other Operating Systems
Treasure Hunter is a powerful crypto scanner that can search a wide range of storage devices. This includes hard drives (HDDs and SSDs), USB keys and SD cards; as well as optical media like CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
However, you may encounter issues if you try to scan a storage device formatted by a different operating system than the one running Treasure Hunter. For instance, if you use a Windows computer to scan a Mac drive, it likely won’t be detected at all. Unfortunately, this is to be expected.
You have two solutions available.
Solution 1: Use the drive’s native operating system
The most straightforward solution is to download the version of Treasure Hunter that matches the operating system used to format the storage device. For example, if you are trying to scan a Mac drive, you should download the Mac version of Treasure Hunter and use it to perform the scan.
Solution 2: Install cross-platform filesystem drivers
Alternatively, you may want to download drivers to transparently handle your storage device as if it were natively supported by your operating system. The advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to run specialized software to read your drive. Instead, it will appear in your File Explorer just like any other drive, making the integration seamless.
I recommend the drivers made by Paragon Software. Their prices are very affordable and you can try them for free to make sure they fit your needs. They offer:
| Driver | Host OS | Created on | Supported filesystems |
|---|---|---|---|
| APFS for Windows | Windows | Mac | APFS: The default format for modern Mac drives. |
| HFS+ for Windows | Windows | Mac | HFS/HFS+: Commonly used for older Mac drives. |
| Linux File Systems for Windows | Windows | Linux | Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Btrfs, XFS |
| Microsoft NTFS for Mac | Mac | Windows | NTFS |
| extFS for Mac | Mac | Linux | Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 |
| Microsoft NTFS for Linux | Linux | Windows or Mac | NTFS and HFS/HFS+: Support for Windows drives and older Mac drives. (Not an error: it includes both.) |
| APFS for Linux | Linux | Mac | APFS: The default format for modern Mac drives. |
Linux users may be able to find open-source alternatives depending on their distro. It’s worth investigating if you don’t wish to pay for drivers.