MacBook – Time machine back up – how can I access the documents when the Mac has died

macbook protime-machine

My Mac has died (it's really old and has some kind of virus and has finally given up the ghost). Luckily I have a time machine backup on an external hard drive.

I really want to save my photos and documents directly to a couple of different hard drives but I'm not planning on buying a new mac.

How can I access my documents from my time machine back up?

My husband has a Mac. Can I restore my documents and photos onto his Mac without affecting his documents etc?

Best Answer

Connect the Time Machine disk to another Mac, then you can browse the backups by clicking on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, holding ⌥ and clicking Browse Other Backup Disks….

Browse Other Backup Disks…

Alternatively, you can look for files just using Finder. Open the Time Machine disk in Finder, then open the folder at this path, replacing ‘computername’ with the name of your computer.

Backups.backupdb/computername/Latest