Has Anyone Ever Known Windows to Corrupt macOS in a Multiboot System?

[Turon]

Firstly, I have a Multiboot system with macOS Sierra on an internal Hard Drive and Windows 10 on an external Solid State Drive. When I installed to BootCamp Support software on my Windows installation it didn't render Windows capable of viewing HFS+ partitions, so I had to install a third-party driver from Paragon for Windows 8.
When I first installed Windows on the SSD, my macOS installation was corrupted in that there were many inexplicable bugs that made the system unworkable.
I opted to reinstall macOS from a TimeMachine Backup and didn't have any further issues for awhile.
But recently, after booting into Windows and going back to macOS, I was unable to open browsers, videos, or music files. I booted back into Windows and tried to view those files and there was no issue.

macOS seems to have been corrupted, but why? Did Windows do it? Or did my Paragon HFS+ driver?

 

[benshive]

The first time I installed Windows using Bootcamp it messed with my macOS partition to the point where I couldn't even boot into macOS anymore because it didn't show up at all. I had to wipe the entire drive in disk utility and then install both again.

 

[Turon]

Shall I just reinstall macOS without wiping it and see if that fixes it? Othwise I'll have to manually copy and paste any valuable files elsewhere before wiping and reinstalling.

Is there a way to safeguard macOS from corruption once Windows is installed? The Paragon HFS+ driver allowed Windows to access all files on the macOS partition, even particularly sensitive system files. Could those file then be corrupted, if I say, run an anti-virus scan from Windows?.

 

[Crash0veride]

I’ve definitely corrupted my system running “hfs+ for windows”. It doesn’t matter if it’s reading the Macos system files. My guess would be that it corrupts the partition and not some key files. I use the drivers consistently for external drives (run steam games off of them) with no problem. I use paragon apfs for the system now though and it only mounts the system partition in read only because it has time machine snapshot files on it. So no issues in read-only mode. It’s a risk and I recommend having consistent time machine backups if you switch between both and need read/write in windows.

 

[Turon]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

 

[maflynn]

I’ve definitely corrupted my system running “hfs+ for windows”.

Yep same here, I think for quick data pulls, i.e., need something off the volume, you'll be ok but running it day to day raises the risk - if that makes sense