Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

Anonymous
2021-08-16T20:47:11+00:00

I have had 4 laptops with Windows 10 for many years and 3 USB hard drives, which I connect to any laptop when needed, that I have used for backups and I use windows 7 image backups. I have restored the image files many, many times from all my laptops with no problems until now. All my laptops have the latest Windows updates. I recently had a problem with one of my laptops where I had to reformat and reinstall windows without activating it because the activation info was in my backup, and I tried to restore my latest backup but Windows could not find or recognize the USB drives as backup locations. File Explorer could read the hard drives with no problem and I could locate the backup I wanted to use. I contacted Windows chat support, went to the second level of support with no luck and they scheduled a call to me with third level support. The call never came.. Anyway, I attributed the failure of not being able to restore the image to the fact that I had never backed up anything with the new installation of Windows to those USB drives.

Now, out of curiosity's sake I decided to try the Restore operation in one of my other laptops, and connected one of the USB drives to it. Surprise, surprise, it didn't find a backup file either, so my problem with my previous laptop had nothing to do with what I thought, it is a Windows 10 problem caused by some update, because, as I said I have restored many many times from those USB drives with no problems, starting with when I had Windows 7 installed in them.

Another curious part is that when Windows can't find an image to restore it prompts you look in a network. Windows allows you to assign a network location to the drive or file that you want to restore, but when Windows goes to this location it, again, says there is no file that can be used.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this problem or it too new?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-08-23T20:37:54+00:00

    Hi,

    If that doesn't help, you might try Adding a "Creator Owner" User with Full Permissions..

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-08-23T20:32:27+00:00

    Hi,

    For lack of anything else to try that I can think of... You might try deleting the Unknown Account..

    That is the only difference between what I see on mine... Which works.. and PCR's and your's which do not work..

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-08-23T19:43:13+00:00

    This is what's on mine

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-08-23T16:54:27+00:00

    Hi,

    I don't know much about mounting a vhdx image as I have never tried before, but I right clicked on one and selected Mount.. I got the same error you mentioned about being Initialized..

    Out of curiosity I went to Disk management and there was another drive there..

    I assigned it a drive letter and it now appears in This PC.. It is obviously a duplicate of my Windows installation..

    I seem to be able to access any file I want..

    Too bad the new HDD didn't resolve your problem.. Since you are starting over, now may be a good time to give switch to Macrium.. I should note that Macrium requires installation to create the needed boot media to recover images.. The good part is that once you have the boot media you no longer need the installed version.. All Macrium features are available from the boot media which runs on Windows PE or RE depending upon your choice at time of creation..

    What I do is install Macrium on a machine in which I can easily delete the partition after creating the media and reload a fresh Image.. Then I have media that will work on all machines without any more installation needed or existing..

    BTW.. I don't think you Mount the vhdx file in a folder.. That may be your problem.. It mounts to a virtual drive..

    You would then need to copy the contents you need from the virtual drive to any folder you choose..

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-08-23T09:58:50+00:00

    Well, it's been a few since I got my 5 Tb USB drive, which I partitioned into 1 Tb partitions and I copied my WindowsImageBackup folder into one of them, but unfortunately with the results. Windows doesn't see it or find it or recognize it. So I decided to create a new image backup to the same folder, just for fun, in the hope that once the two backups are in the same partition Windows might see both, but again with the same result. The funny part, this time, was that Windows overwrote the previous  WindowsImageBackup folder, so presumably I only had a backup of my present installation, and I created a Restore disk, to make sure I had "compatible" backup and a restore disk, but when tried to restore the image, it didn't work either. So, finally I decided to reinstall all my apps and have started doing so. My idea was to at least recuperate some of my more important files by mounting the vhdx file, which is beggining to look like a big problem because the system rejects my intent to mount the file by displying a message that says it is initialized or etc etc and to use the Disk Management snap in to fix the problems. I managed to find some information about it using an MMC command, which I was able to open the Disk Management window and create a VHD folder in one of the 1 Tb partitions, but I can't seem to mount the image file in that folder. I still get the same message that I got when trying to mount directly with the mount command.

    Any of you guys can give me a hint as to how to use the snap in procedure?

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