Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

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By the way, the procedure to mount the vhdx file is more complex than that. Since I tried double clicking the file to mount it and it did not work, I did a search and found this procedure: How to Create and Mount VHD / VHDX File in Windows 10 – Step by Step Guide (systoolsgroup.com)

We don't get notified of edits. You should only edit a post to which there has not yet been a response. And even then, do it quickly because a response may have already begun. And when I begin a response, it may be an hour before I'm through.

Anyway, that link is informative as to creating one's own .vhdx to use as a partition on a more/less permanent basis. looks like. I guess it's a way to have a partition without using as much space as a real one. I never did that. I'd prefer to find space on a drive & create an actual partition on it.

But the bottom two sections -- "Attach Virtual Hard Disk" & "Dismounting VHD and VHDX in Windows 10" -- are an alternative to double-clicking (or right-click, Mount) the .vhdx of Backup & Restore. That way, you probably won't get the error message. But all you had to do was was click OK on the message, then put a letter on the fake partition using Disk Management.

Well, as I said, I have been using that procedure for years, even before Windows 10, and never had any problems. I have been backing up with a Windows 7 image back forever and it seems to be a coincidence, at least in my setup, that when I discovered that I could not restore to one laptop because of one set of problems with that laptop, I ended up discovering that my other laptops, which had not had any problems, all of the sudden have the same problem, and the thought occurred to me that since Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7, the programmers had inadvertently, perhaps, screwed up by removing or changing something that relates to old WindowsImageBackup files, which are part of the Windows 7 legacy.

The way I have been backing up my 4 laptops is by deleting old backups wherever they happen to be, and reformatting the drive or partition prior to backing up. So, as a consequence, backups from a particular laptop does not always gets backed up in the same drive or partition. My experience has shown me that it does not matter where it is as long as the correct USB drive with the right backup is connected to the laptop, the software will find it. I never change anything after creating the backup file.

I did try the Macrium Reflect free version, but it does not work other than with the files it created, It will only restore its own backups.

That's right, mounting the .vhdx is only useful for recovering individual personal files. Then, the apps that use them would have to be reinstalled, if not already present.

I still think you needn't have installed Windows first. Backup & Restore would have done the reformat if run from any external recovery environment. I would only run it from the Recovery partition if all the partitions were the same size & in the same position as they are in the image. Also, I'd want the existing Recovery partition to be of the same Windows version as is in the image. I don't think I'd even want a greater version in that case. However, I don't think this was your problem because I'm sure the images should have at least shown up.

The fact that the images don't even show up on any computer is really puzzling. I thought Slance310 might have been right about permissions, but why would they have changed on all the HDDs/partitions involved or gone bad in all the computers? And you say they haven't changed at all anyway. The other things he said (like renaming or moving WindowsImageBackup off the root) could also have done it, but you say none of that happened.

I wonder whether Backup & Restore will write a new image to those drives? Plug one in, open its WindowsImageBackup folder, & rename the computername folder inside. Then make a new image to that drive. It should go into the WindowsImageBackup folder & have the name of the computer. It will be separate & distinct from the renamed one, & both would be offered by the restore process (if you ever get that to work).

Hi,

WindowsImageBackup is very finicky.. To make my point, I just tried recovering one of the images that had previously worked earlier this evening to an exact duplicate of the 512GB SSD that I use for Windows.. The images did appear as available, but all attempts failed with some error concerning "An Active Data Drive In Bios" and another I don't remember..

But prior to this I made the mistake of changing two things at once.. A different drive, and I renamed the folder inside the WindowsImageBackup folder copy.. It's name was Asrock just for reference.. I simply added a date..

When initially attempting to recover these two images to a 1TB HDD and a 512GB SSD, neither of my brand new images were appearing.. After a good bit of head banging I tried something else.. One of the things I tried was creating a 3rd image which worked normally.. This gave me the idea to return the renamed folder to it's original name.. Suddenly I now had all three images available and working.. It seems that tinkering with the copy also caused the original to not appear.. After returning the copy to it's original name, it and the original appear and work..

BTW... Have you been switching the actual WindowsImageBackups between different drives ?

I should note that I have been doing this for a good number of years as well.. I haven't used it much lately due to the types of issues we are discussing now.. The free Macrium Reflect seems to be an excellent imaging tool, but that will not make your existing images usable..

My recollection is that at one time I was able to recover images to different drives without issue, but the Windows 7 Backup + Restore has appeared to me to become less reliable with every new build of Windows 10..

Well, mine is win 10, 21H1, OS Build 19043.1165 -- & just a week/so ago Backup & Restore (Win 7) worked fine to rescue this computer from an unbootable situation. OK, it was OS Build ...1151 at the time.

(1) Why did you reinstall Windows before attempting to restore the image? Did you want to use the new Recovery partition (Shift+Restart goes there) to do the restore? That might fail when the other partitions in the image (Windows & EFI/System Reserved) are a different size or at a different location than in the image. This is because the restore process will not reformat the drive when the Recovery partition is in use.

The restore process would reformat the HDD itself, if run from a Repair Disc, a USB Recovery drive or Installation media. Then, you would get all the partitions back exactly where they came from -- including the Recovery partition that is in the image, & it will match the version of the rest of the installation too.

(2) Do you have 3 external hard drives or just one with 3 partitions?

(3) And each partition has just a WindowsImageBackup folder in it?

(4) And none of them show up in the image restore window?

(5) Can you read & write other files to the external HDD?

(6) Can you mount any of the images...?...

(a) Open the WindowsImageBackup folder, then the computername folder & finally the "Backup..." folder.

(b) Double-click the largest .vhdx file inside the Backup folder to mount it.

That will be the image of the C: partition. It will get a letter (say, E:) & open in a 2nd instance of File Explorer. You may put it side by side with the 1st instance. Then browse to your files & copy them from E: to C:. (But I wouldn't try the reverse.) When done, right-click E:, & select "Eject".

[But I must add, the first time you double-click a .vhdx, it may give an error message. So, just OK the error, & open Disk Management. The mounted image will have the same name C: had when the image was made, but no letter. Put a letter on it, & it will show up in File Explorer.]

1. This was the situation prior to creating the problem where I was not able to restore the windows 7 image file. I had a dual boot system which was created by Ubuntu when I decided to add Ubuntu and Windows was already in the system, therefore Ubuntu became the boot OS. The Windows partition was getting full and I had extra unused space in the Ubuntu partition, so I decided to extend the windows partition by using some of the space available in the Ubuntu partition, which was listed with an ext2 format only, and the repartitioning software did not allowed me to extend into it. Not knowing better I changed the Ubuntu partition type to Primary hoping that would allow me to extend into it. That was what created the problem, I could not boot after that. It would boot into some linux gnu something command. I don't know linux and I looked online for the error I was getting and there were some responses but none worked or did not have enough information about how to use the information. Anyway, after a while I got frustrated that since I had a backup only about a week old I could restore it if I reinstalled Windows, which I have done in the past. After trying different things to try to reformat and reinstall Windows I finally was able to do it, and the rest I already told it.
2. I have 3 external HD of different sizes: two where only there is only one backup and one where there are 4 backups in their own partitions.
3. Yes the only contents of the partitions where there is a backup is the WindowsImageBackup folder.
4. No, none of them show in the Restore window, but as I explained before, this has nothing to do with what I did with the laptop with the dual boot system, since the same thing happened with the other laptops when I tried to see what happens when I used the Restore feature.
5. yes, I can read and write to the external HD using File Explorer
6. Even if I were able to mount and copy files, that is not what I want or need. The contents of all the installed files is over 500 Gb and I have lots of installed programs and I cannot just copy the installed program files since they would not work or run because the registry does not reflect their installation. The only solution is restoring the whole image.

By the way, the procedure to mount the vhdx file is more complex than that. Since I tried double clicking the file to mount it and it did not work, I did a search and found this procedure: How to Create and Mount VHD / VHDX File in Windows 10 – Step by Step Guide (systoolsgroup.com)