The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg was recently asked how to share an external hard drive with both a Mac and Windows PC. Walt’s conclusion:

“You can install a third-party Windows program called MacDrive 7, which allows Windows to both read from, and write to, Mac-formatted drives. I have tested it successfully with Vista under Boot Camp on an iMac.”

If Mr. Mossberg says MacDrive is the way to go, who are we to argue? Read more of Mossberg’s Mailbox.

The headline says it all. That is how Tyler Regas over at the Mobodojo blog described MacDrive 7.

He put MacDrive through the paces last week and ranked MacDrive up there with sliced bread as useful things everyone needs.

“When was the last time you used something that just worked? That butter knife you used to spread jam on your toast this morning, did it require a reboot? What about the time you looked at the painting in your living room. You know, the one of the ship at sea or the sad clown. How about a freshly sharpened pencil, piece of bread, or a can of motor oil? You may now add MacDrive 7 to that list, and if you really use Windows on your Mac a lot, whether via Fusion, Parallels, or Boot Camp, you will find it invaluable.”

Check out the Mobodojo blog and read the entire piece.

With more and more people living in a cross-platform world, the need to easily transfer files and documents between Macs and PCs is increasing. One easy way to share files is to use MacDrive.

Today’s Hot Tip will show how to format a Mac external drive direct from Windows.

With MacDrive installed on your PC, go to “My Computer” to see a list of current drives on your system. Find the drive you wish to format and right-click the drive. A context menu (shown right)will appear giving you options for that drive. With MacDrive installed you will see new options, select “Format Mac Disk”.

The MacDrive Disk Manager will open enabling you to “Check Mac Volumes”, which allows you to find and repair errors on Mac volumes or “Modify Mac Volumes”, which allows you to create, format and delete Mac volumes. We will be using the “Modify Mac Volumes” option.

Once you select “Modify Mac Volumes” you will be shown the disks currently on your system. Again, select the disk you wish to format and “Initialize disk”.

You will now create your Mac Volume. You can rename the disk and select the format (Mac OS HFS, Mac OS Extended HFS+ or ). You can also select the size of disk you wish to create.

In mere seconds you will have a newly formatted Mac hard drive on your Windows PC.

Check out what else MacDrive can do for you.

Dennis Radeke posted on the Adobe Blog The Genesis Project that he uses MacDrive nearly everyday to access his mountains of media.

“As an Adobe guy who runs around the country with laptops, drives, etc. and needs to be prepared to demo Mac or PC at a moment’s notice, having access to hard drives regardless of their format or OS preference is paramount,” Radeke blogged.

Dennis described MacDrive even better than we could…

“It works just as it’s supposed to which is why I like it so much. It just works…”

Read more from Dennis on The Genesis Project.