Time Machine to a P.C?

I recently bought a P.C Laptop with Windows 7. I have a simplicity external drive with everything from my Mac backed up on it. Is their a way to get that information onto my new P.C?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5), 20" 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram

Posted on Nov 11, 2009 11:41 AM

Reply
2 replies

Nov 11, 2009 12:18 PM in response to Scudder

I wouldn't recommend trying to transfer data from your Time Machine backup to the PC. For one thing, the PC needs extra commercial software to read the HFS+ format drive you're using for Time Machine. Further, the Time Machine backup files are stored in a special way, which will make it difficult to find the correct files when you're browsing them directly, instead of through the Time Machine interface in OS X.

It would be best to manually transfer (drag and drop) your files to a flash drive or a FAT32 (PC) formatted external hard drive. You'll want to do this from the Mac with the files on it. If your Mac has crashed, you'll want to restore the files from your Time Machine backup, then transfer to the external drive. Once they're on the external drive, you can transfer them to the Windows PC. As an alternative to transferring with a flash drive or external hard drive, you can transfer over a network, but that's a little harder to set up.

Time Machine is great for backing up and restoring a Mac. It's not designed for, and not good at, transferring files between computers.

Nov 11, 2009 9:15 PM in response to Scudder

First make sure all content you want to transfer onto your PC is located on your Mac.

Copy your contents from your Mac onto a FAT formatted external harddrive, you can format it in disk utility by simply erasing the time machine and select MS-DOS (FAT) to reformat. (This will erase your time machine saved points). Then copy all your content onto the external hard drive that you want to transfer... Then copy and paste onto your PC.

Alternatively, you could just use a jump drive. They come with lots of capacity now.

As for the time machine points, you can't transfer them to a PC... they would be useless there.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Time Machine to a P.C?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.