Had my IMac stolen a few months ago and have now replaced it with a PC . Fortunatly I had backed up the IMac internal drive to an external usb drive using silverkeeper back up software . I need to find somewhere/someone that can help me restore the backup. Any Ideas? I'm in Bangkok.

I'm not familiar withsilverkeeper, but are you sure it is mac-formatted?

The easiest approach is to use a linux live-cd to read the drive - that is what i used to do transferring files from home to work. ###### Small Linux should work. http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/

Are you trying to restore your Mac backup data to a PC or to another Mac? If to PC, just go get something like TransMac which would allow you to mount the external drive from Windows. Don't you miss your Mac???

arent the two interchangable, i.e macs can read Windows HD and (perhaps) vice versa?

I'm trying to restore to a PC. I tried using transmac but I could not find all the files. I had about 40 gig of data on the external drive, about 30 gig are mp3 files. When I looked at the usage on transmac it still tells me 40 gig used, when I look at the mp3 files it's only showing 12 gig? I thought as I made a backup I might need to restore it to get back all the files if that makes sense?

Yes I miss my Mac so much, Windows is so "clunky" and inelegant compared to OSX. Everything works ok but it's not very slick. I went with a PC purely due to the economics, but I will be back to Mac as soon as I can afford it!

No, Macs can read standard Windows partitions (don't think they can do NTFS), but Microsoft has no native support for Macs.

You can easily save data into the DOS FAT format and work with it on a Mac (although you have a bunch of extra files when you see it in Windows), but MS doesn't make anything easy for apple.

I'd try this:

1) make image of your mac hdd into a file.

2) boot image with "PearPC" which is an apple mac power pc emulator

3) copy files over the network to your windows host machine.

4) wipe hands on pants.

one con: the disk image much be a certain size

Also, AFAIK linux with the relevent module can read HFS formated partitions - unless you use encryption...

I don't know if it can help but for 130Baht, You can go to Panthip Plaza and buy OSX for PC!

By having OSX as your system, you should enjoy a virtual Mac and get access to your HD back-up!