IBackup Viewer is the ultimate free iPhone Backup Extractor to export personal data from iOS Backups. For Mac OS X and Windows.
![Viewer Viewer](https://www.itunesextractor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/recover-data-from-iphone-backup-on-mac.png)
Connect the Drive to Your PC RELATED: Either way, the first step is connecting that Mac-formatting Time Machine drive to your Windows computer. Hopefully you’re using a USB drive for Time Machine backups — most Windows PCs aren’t compatible with Thunderbolt. When you connect the Mac-formatted Time Machine drive to your computer, you won’t see the files on it. That’s because Windows can’t understand the drive’s HFS+ file system. You can normally share drives between a Mac and Windows PC because Macs also understand, but OS X insists that Time Machine drives be formatted with HFS+. Don’t immediately or you’ll lose all the Time Machine backups on it. Windows can’t read it, but all your files are still there.
Read the HFS+ Partition RELATED: You’ll need software that can to access your Time Machine backup files. The only free application we’ve found for this is. Unfortunately, it does require Java installed to function — after you’re done with HFSExplorer or at least to help protect yourself.
Watch out for when you install it, too. If you really can’t stand Java, other possible solutions include. Both of these are paid applications, and you probably don’t want to purchase them just to recover files one time.
However, they do offer time-limited trials that will work for a one-time restore process. Open the HFSExplorer application after installing it, click the File menu, and select “Load file system from device.” It should auto-detect the appropriate device for you. If not, you can select devices manually from the “Detected devices” box until one works. Restoring Files From Your Time Machine Backups Once you’re viewing the contents of your Mac-formatted Time Machine drive in HFSExplorer, you’ll see a folder named “Backups.backupdb”. This is the Time Machine backups folder. Underneath it, you’ll find a folder with the name of your Mac.
This is the folder that contains all the Time Machine backups from that specific Mac. Under that folder, you’ll see folders named after specific dates and times and a “Latest” folder.
The Latest folder is your most current Time Machine backup. Unless you want to restore old, deleted files or previous versions of files, go to the Latest folder. Under the Latest folder, you’ll probably see a folder named “Macintosh HD” — that’s the Time Machine backup for your Mac’s system drive. You can restore any files you want from the Mac system, but you’ll find your personal files under Macintosh HD/Users/NAME. To restore all your personal files to your Windows PC, navigate to this folder, select it, and click the Extract button. HFSExplorer will extract the files from your Time Machine drive and copy them to your Windows partition.
![Backup Viewer For Mac Backup Viewer For Mac](https://mattj.io/images/smsBackupReader_v0.7.png)
You could also extract individual files or every single backup file. For example, you could dig through the Time Machine backups to look for only the important files, select them, and click the Extract button to extract them. Or, you could select one of the top-level folders — the “Latest” backup for your entire latest backup or the “Backups.backupdb” folder for every single file in the entire Time Machine backup. HFSExplorer would copy the directories and everything inside to your Windows PC. You can then dig through them using normal Windows tools, recovering the files you want and deleting everything you no longer want. You should probably have HFSExplorer follow symbolic links, although this may result in duplicate files. You can always clean everything up later.