Need advice (help!) Can I get files from Time Machine to a PC

My Mac book's HD I think is dead. I have an external HD with Time Machine back ups on it. I really NEED to get my address book contacts off and onto my back up PC, for right now. Is there even a way to do that?? and while Im at it what about iTunes library?
Please tell me there is a way.

Chad,
I must disagree with Nerowolf on this one. You should be able to get the items you need off the drive, even connected to a PC.
Contrary to what Nerowolf believes, Time Machine stores backups as standard, complete files; it does not make "incremental" backups in the traditional sense. Each and every backup includes every file from the source, and each one is a complete file.
The trick with Time Machine is that the data associated with those many, many files is only copied to the drive once, and each "iteration" of the same file links to that single copy of the data. The process whereby this occurs is called "multiple hard links," and the resultant files are called "multi-linked files."
You need not be concerned with all this. The important point is that the files are seen as normal files to you and to the OS.
The real problem, however, is that those files are stored on a volume formatted as HFS+, and Windows cannot normally access this file system. If you attempt to connect your Time Machine drive to a PC, it will want to format it. If you really need to access the drive, you'll need something like MacDrive, a PC utility that allows Windows to mount and access HFS+ volumes. Look for it on Versiontracker.com (in order to use it, you'll need to pay for it).
CAVEAT: I do not know with certainty that MacDrive includes compatibility with Multi-linked files. Multi-linking is part and parcel of the HFS+ file system format, so there may be no problem, but you might want to double-check to make sure Multi-linked files are fully supported in MacDrive.
Scott

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