Can I back up and restore individual Windows [C] drive files using Time Machine?

This question has been answered a million times over, but only in the context of backing up the Windows VM which is informative, but unhelpful.

I am a Mac/Windows user running Parallels Desktop 8 for a Windows XP guest OS and I use Time Machine for backups. From time to time I may need to restore a specific file from several backup cycles ago that happens to be located in a folder in the Windows' C drive.

I haven't found much of anything - certainly nothing authoritative or definitive - that describes the best backup strategy to position myself to achieve the goal listed above.

 

As far as TM is concerned the whole VM disk is a file, so there's no granularity in that, you can't restore just part of/in it (a file). For that sort of behaviour you should either use shared folders that keep your woking files on the Mac side, or use a backup solution specific for Windows.