Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Take your external HDD drive to your local Apple Store and explain your situation. Ask them for help temporarily connecting your drive so that you can access the files you need and then copy those files to a second external drive. If the files you need are document related and or photos etc., you can connect the recovered files external drive to your new iPad and view them that way.
 
The Files app on iPadOS does support HFS+ formatted drives and APFS drives, so whatever format your Time Machine drive is in is supported.

Correct. But the new caveat is that it looks like unencrypted HFS. So if the TM drive is encrypted, still out of luck with i*OS devices.

Note: An external storage device must have only a single data partition, and it must be formatted as APFS, APFS (encrypted), macOS Extended (HFS+), exFAT (FAT64), FAT32, or FAT. To change the formatting of a storage device, use the Files app on iPad or a Mac or PC.

And probably a pain to navigate the file structure on an iPad as well vs using the TM interface that Mac would offer.
 
No it’s not

You’re using a benefit they advertise.
The “benefit” they advertise is not: “Take a new computer home, use it for some personal task, and then return it to us for a full refund,” and to do that would be to commit a fraud.

In this case it would rob Apple of the difference between the profit on a full price sale and the profit on a refurbished one. It doesn’t matter if it’s less than a drop in a bucket to Apple. Theft is theft.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: cateye and maflynn
Sorry I can’t buy a new Mac then return it… I’d feel far too guilty!
They meant m4 MacBook Air.
Thank you for your reply!

I was really hoping I could use my iPad Air to access my files on Time Machine…

It seems like Time Machine is only useful when you have more than one Mac???
 
Sorry I can’t buy a new Mac then return it… I’d feel far too guilty!

Thank you for your reply!

I was really hoping I could use my iPad Air to access my files on Time Machine…

It seems like Time Machine is only useful when you have more than one Mac???
You cannot, and probably will not ever, be able to access a Time Machine backup file/folder/drive from iPadOS. If you need the files, you'll need a Mac.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.