Mediafour has updated MacDrive with MacDrive 9 for Windows, and has released a new product called MacDrive 9 Pro for Windows. The standard edition adds support for writing to Lion Boot Camp partitions from within Windows. The new Pro edition supports Apple RAID from within Windows, as well as adding other new features. Both add performance improvements.

MacDrive enables Windows to read and write to Mac-formatted drives from Windows Explorer, as well as mount unencrypted Mac DMG disk images in Windows. MacDrive includes a Windows utility that can format, partition and repair Mac-formatted storage media. In addition to running on Windows on a PC, MacDrive can run on Mac booted with Windows with Boot Camp. The later case enables Windows to read and write files located on the Mac partition. MacDrive also enables Windows installed in a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion to access external Mac drives. MacDrive also enables Windows to browse the backed up files on Time Machine backup sets, and copy those files to Windows.

MacDrive 9 Standard adds a Windows the Quick Start Launcher window, which provides links to open all of MacDrive's features, such as opening Mac-format storage, burning CDs and DVDs in Mac format, and repairing Mac storage. MacDrive 9 also improves the ability to repair Mac drives.

The new MacDrive 9 Pro includes all the features of MacDrive 9 Standard, but adds four new features to Windows: support of Apple RAID sets, Secure Delete, the ability to create Mac ISO image files, and the ability to burn Blu-ray discs.

MacDrive 9 Pro's RAID feature enables Windows Explorer to display and access Mac-formatted RAIDs created with Apple's Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4 and later. MacDrive 9 Pro supports RAIDs that are striped, mirrored, or concatenated. (For mirrored sets, all drives must be connected.) MacDrive 9 Pro cannot mount a RAID of greater than 2TB in Windows XP 32-bit, due to the inherent limitation in Windows XP. Large RAIDs are supported with Windows 7 and Vista.

If you've tried Mac Drive 9 Standard or Pro what you think of it.