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Can I read APFS formatted M.2 NVMe SSD on Windows 10?

Hey forums !

I recently got a second hand ssd from a friend. It's a PCIe/NVMe SSD that was used on a Mac. It's formated with APFS. I don't have a Mac to format it back to fat 32. I installed it into my desktop thinking I can go in disk manager and format it, but it's not listed there.

Any solution to my problem? All I found were 3rs party apps that cost a lot of money.

Any help would be appreciated!

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To start with Apple SSD’s are not M.2 so using it in a M.2 slot won’t work. Here’s a great guide which can explain things better than I can do here The Ultimate Guide to Apple’s Proprietary SSDs

As far as dealing with an Apple formatted SSD. With the correct adapter for the SSD you should be able to see the physical drive. You won’t be able to access the files within it as both the older HFS+ and the newer APFS files systems will need drivers your system likely doesn’t have.

So far Apples newer file system APFS is not readable by other OS’s so that prohibits access to the files within it and that still doesn’t include the possibility someone has encrypted the drive as well.

That just leaves reformatting the drive to something windows can use.

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2 Comments:

Hey Dan! Thanks for the answer, however, I should have specified that this is a standard m. 2 ssd and was being used with an adapter (2x4 to 3x4, I believe)I side the Macbook. So indeed, this is a standard m. 2 ssd from SK hynix! Is there still a way to use it?

Thanks!

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Using your windows disk utility should see it so it can be reformatted to FAT32 or NTFS file systems.

If it can't, then its dead drive.

Sadly, M.2 SSD's with adapters tend to fail in MacBook Pro's. I've got a ton of dead SSD's and adapters which failed.

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Jonah DeleseLeuc will be eternally grateful.
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