System Image Recovery - Can't find System Image

Anonymous

I am trying to restore a backup system image to my repaired PC. It is wiped clean. I have the "Repair Disc Windows 7 64 Bit" that I created in Windows 7. Using Windows 7 Backup I have a system image backup on an external WD Essentiasl 1TB USB Hard Drive.

I insert the Repair Disc and start the system. Get to System Recoevery Options. I have the external Hard Disk with the system backup image connected. Select System Image Recovery option. Says "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer. Attach the backup hard disk or insert the final DVD from a bckup set and click retry. Alternatively, close this dialog for more options. Retry gives me the same message. Tried starting with drive attached, not attached, same result. Click cancel.

Next option selected is "Select a system image." No system image listed. Hit refresh, still nothing. Top of screen says "Click Advanced to add a network location or install a driver for a backup device if it does not show up in the list below." I click on the Advanced tab. Option to "Search for a system image on the network" or "Install a driver." I select install a driver. Find the right driver for the WD Essential hard drive (disk.sys and partmgr.sys) and when I click on them I get "The specified location does not contain information about your hardware." Click OK. Can't find how to load these drivers I am being asked for.

Funny thing is that on the screen where I search for driver I can see the WD Essential Hard Drive connected to the system. I can also see the system image files but when I click on them I get the same error message, "The specified location does not contain information about your hardware."

Please HELP. This is very frustrating!!!

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Anonymous

While in Repair Mode, you have an option to open a Command Prompt. From there try the following commands:

Mountvol

(This command will show you all available drives, including your external disk)

dir Q:

(Replace Q: with one drive letter at a time from the letters that the mountvol command showed you, e.g.

dir D:

dir E:

etc.

until you see a folder "WindowsImageBackup" on the screen. Let's assume it is F:\WindowsImageBackup.

dir F:\WindowsImageBackup /s

(This command should show you the contents of the image folder, with files totalling more than 10 GBytes)

Now perhaps this image folder is missing, incomplete or inaccessible.

I have to add that I am disappointed with the native imaging facility under Windows 7. It is temperamental and its functionality is extremely limited. I recently bought myself a copy of Acronis TrueImage 10 and its is to the Windows imaging tool like a fully functional motor cycle is to a child's tricycle. Other brand imaging tools are just as functional - just make sure that they are certified for Windows 7.

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95 additional answers

Anonymous

2016-03-31T17:13:02+00:00

This answer is very accurate. One minor addition:

3a. If you have backed up several machines to the same drive, Windows 7 image recovery does not understand image recovery directories from newer Windows versions. So copy the exact directory structure of the wanted Windows 7 image to another NTFS-formatted external USB (non flash) drive before restoring. This saved my day.

DING DING DING DING - We have a winner. This worked for me. Lesson I learned from this is to keep my Win7 and Win10 image backups on separate external drives.

Moved the Win7 image I was trying to access to another drive that only contained another Win7 image I had built for my brother and was able to access the backups.

Thank you so much.
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Anonymous

2016-03-14T14:43:08+00:00

Not sure about Win 7, but in 8.1, the name of the image file must be WindowsImageBackup and must be in the root dir of the drive. Nothing else will work.
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Anonymous

2016-03-12T20:33:29+00:00
HOW I RESTORED MY SYSTEM IMAGE FROM MY WD HOME CLOUD: SPECIFICS

This is how I restored a system image I had saved on my WD My Cloud after replacing the only internal hard drive on my Windows 10 PC.

It is not easy!

My PC is up and running. I document it here in the hope it will save you from what I suffered.
1. I had created system image "WindowsImageBackup" on my WD My Cloud. My PC had been free upgraded to Win 10 from Win 7. At the same time I had created a System Repair disk. This is a more common process for Win 7, but is available in Win 10 under Control Panel\System and Security\Backup and Restore (Windows 7).
2. Microsoft had helpfully warned me my hard disk was on the way out. They were dead right. The next day it was unusable junk. "No problem!" I thought - "I'll install a new drive and restore my System Image."
3. I replaced the drive with a new Seagate 1TB hybrid drive. So far, so good.
4. I booted from my System Repair disk. This worked too, but there's no way I or anyone else I searched could clearly identify how to access it over the network (it's a network drive). It's supposed to work if you find some obscure driver and install it, but like others, I gave up.
5. I bought an external USB drive. I made a good choice there and got a standard Seagate 1TB USB 3 model with no hardware encryption or messing around with the NTFS file system. Use anything else at your peril because it might not work properly with System Restore. On no account get one with password access or any kind of encryption enabled.
6. The new external drive was plug-and-play, so I plugged it into my partner's laptop and copied the whole WindowsSystemBackup folder on to it from the WD. When it finished I noted it had been zipped to become " WindowsSystemBackup.zip". If this happens to you, unzip it but don't recursively unzip any folder contents. Just double-click on the zip file and copy the folder below (same name) to the external drive's root. The resulting WindowsSystemBackup folder MUST be at the root of the external drive or you have no hope.
7. I plugged the drive into the PC with the new hard disk. I had to use the USB 2 Port, because the restore will not see USB 3 ports by default. There's probably some way to get round this by installing drivers, but I had no luck with that. USB 2 it was.
8. I managed to boot from CD with my System Repair Disk, went to Advanced Options, asked to restore from a System Image and at last, my System Image was found. About an hour later, I am happily typing this into that very machine.
The lessons I have learned are:

a) Don't buy disk drives with over-clever features like hardware encryption or fancy formatiing/archiving unless you need them. They can wreck your ability to restore an image.This applies especially to external drives.

b) Just because you can save a system image on your home cloud, don't get a false sense of security. Such images are like headless nails: easy to knock in but hard to get back.
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Anonymous

2016-02-18T22:17:49+00:00

I had this problem with Windows 10. My SSD had a hiccup and was unreadable.

Formatted SSD, reinstalled windows 7 and windows 10 upgrade, and wouldn't see image.

The SSD had 2 recovery partitions by doing this. Removing the extra partition didn't work.

My fix was delete all partitions, so all drive is unallocated space.

Clean install windows 10 from an ISO disk downloaded from MS.

Boot from the rescue disk, and the image was seen and restored ok.

I noticed there is an extra 100MB partition created by windows 10 that isn't seen by computer management.

possibly this has something to do with it, I'm not sure.
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