first time external hard drive time machine

You selected files and folders might have symbolic links, and HFS Explorer follows the same. If you want to export only a few folders or files from Time Machine backup, navigate to the required folder and choose the file(s) and hit the Export button. Choose the destination folder in your Windows device and HFS Explorer will export and copy Time Machine backup to Windows automatically. To restore entire Time Machine backup to your Windows, navigate to the backup folder and click on the Export button. However, you can export all your files from Time Machine backups to Windows manually with the software programs which can read drives formatted in HFS+ files system.

Windows and OS X are two different platforms, technically we can only view all the Time Machine backups and its files using these tools, but we can not restore settings or applications. Luckily there are few such tools available in the market while some of them come with a price tag. The other way to restore Time Machine backups on Windows is using any third party tools which can read HFS, HFS+, and HFSX file systems. But formatting will delete all Time Machine backups permanently, and we don’t want to do this. The one way to connect your Time Machine backup drive to Windows is by formatting it in any of the Windows supported file system.

Unfortunately, Windows only supports NTFS and FAT32 file systems, and it can not detect Mac formatted hard disks and disk images. 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.

First time external hard drive time machine