Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

When using the Repair Disc or equivalent external recovery environment, I would think whatever image is there is the right one. The HDD is reformatted & all the partitions are restored from the image. That should end up bad only if BIOS had been switched away from the UEFI/Legacy mode that existed when the image was made. You'd have to switch it back to boot. Or maybe it would detect the problem & warn of it before doing the restore, I don't really know. But I'll bet Slance310 knows.

The last thing Backup & Restore does when making its image is to make a shadow copy onto the HDD/partition to which it made the image. I think that's what causes trouble when the WindowsImageBackup folder is moved to another drive because it stays behind. It could be worth a try, but I think your plan also will run into trouble owing to the shadow copy. Sounds as if you'll have one that doesn't match the image.

Based partially on something you suggested, something along those occurred to me, which is to do a backup of my existing installation, which is small in a diferent partition in the same USB drive and then erase the backup and copy the old backup to this drive and then try to do a restore, all without rebooting. I wonder what it is that Windows looks at to determine if a backup is the right one and whether it will also reject this copy of the old backup. I am also creating a System Repair Disk right after the backup.

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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).