Time Machine For PC backups is a powerful and useful feature every Apple users prefer to secure their personal and professional data. Being a developer, I regularly commit my code to BitBucket for backups and to safeguard personal files and memories; I use Time Machine backup every week. I will connect my 1 TB WD passport external hard drive to Mac, and it creates the latest backup every time. Everything looks good from outside, but the real problem starts when you want to access Time Machine backups on Windows PC or laptop. Recently my MacBook Pro denied to power on even after PRAM, NVRAM, and SMC reset, and I switched to Windows laptop till it gets repaired.
When I tried to connect my external hard drive, Windows failed to detect it since Mac formats the hard drive in HFS+ format while creating the first Time Machine backup. Unfortunately, Windows only supports NTFS and FAT32 file systems, and it can not detect Mac formatted hard disks and disk images. The one way to connect your Time Machine backup drive to Windows is by formatting it in any of the Windows supported file system. But formatting will delete all Time Machine backups permanently, and we don’t want to do this.
Copying Time Machine Backups to Windows
HFS Explorer from Cotacombae and HFS+ for Windows by Paragon are two popular softwares for Windows to read HFS, HFS+ and HFSX files systems. The former is a free tool with basic user interface but requires Java whereas the latter is a more advanced HFS+ reader with the rich interface but comes with a price tag. However, HFS+ for Windows offers a 7-day free trial which is quite enough to test and understand the software. Both tools have its pros and cons – you need to pick one of your choices.
If you want to restore Time Machines backups to Windows frequently and don’t want to install Java on your device, then HFS+ for Windows is the best option for you. But paying for something which comes for free doesn’t make sense. So, we’ll go with the free solution using HFS Explorer with the only downside of installing Java.
This solution to view Time Machine backups on Windows works on all popular versions including Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and even on Windows XP.
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.
TimeMachineEditor
TimeMachineEditor is a software for macOS that starts backups in Time Machine at particular times. You can choose an interval or create other types of scheduling (see the screenshots below).
This is useful if you don’t need to backup every hour and don’t want the performance penalty. For example you might be frequently creating or modifying files which would cause long-running backup operations throughout the day.
Comodo Time Machine (CTM) is a powerful system rollback utility that allows users to quickly restore their computers to an earlier point in time. CTM ‘snapshots’ are a complete record of your entire system (including the registry, critical operating system files, and user-created documents).
Software Developers and testers can easily restore test systems to the default configuration after each deployment without the need to manually uninstall each application. Home users can even let the kids run amok on the family PC for an afternoon and be safe in the knowledge that any damage can be instantly undone and all files recovered.
Comodo Time Machine features an intuitive, friendly interface which offers quick and easy access to all functionality in the application. Additionally, it also features a sub-console that can be accessed before Windows starts and a Quick Operation console containing shortcuts to important and commonly executed tasks.
