How to get Win 7 to restore previous backup from USB drive? 2

[BobMCT]

Due to my own fault, my laptop's hdd failed. So I purchased a replacement for it beit slightly smaller capacity (500 vs 750) but <200GB was in use.

Before the failure I create several system backups to a NAS drive which completed successfully. I tried what I could to boot Win7 from a USB drive but couldn't so I used a Win 7 DVD to load the system onto the new drive and reboot.
At this point I plug in the USB HDD that contains my system backup (I copied it from the NAS) and Windows Explorer sees the drive and the backup file(s). However, when I try to restore a prior system backup, it refuses to "see" the USB drive.

So, have any of you Windows 7 experts any idea how I might be able to recover my system backup to this new drive?

TIA

 

[goombawaho]

Check out this article first and see if you can make it work:
Link

 

[linney]

make sure that the disk that you're restoring the backup to is the same size or larger than the disk that you backed up."

Restore your computer from a system image backup

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Restore-your-computer-from-a-system-image-backup

Backup forum

Backup – Windows and Windows Server

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsbackup/threads

See these more detailed Tutorials about extracting individual files (as a last resort ), make sure you are doing things correctly.

Windows 7 - System Image - Extract Files Using Disk Management

http://windows.bigresource.com/Track/windows7-41YJaIVr/

This one mentions Security Access Permissions which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere.


This is how to extract files from a Windows 7 full image backup!

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/cb10df76-bd18-4bc0-a0dc-d9b010a0a236/

 

[BobMCT]

Thanks guys for the tips.

It took a LONG time (2 days) but I ended up installing Acronis TI 2013 on my desktop allowing me to create a bootable USB drive for use as an Acronis recovery tool.

I then copied my WindowsBackupImage set from my NAS to a different USB HDD. Finally on my laptop I booted from the USB recovery and used Acronis to restore from the Windows image on the other USB HDD. And I now have my system back at a slightly smaller size as well (500 vs 750GB).

Thanks again, I'm now breathing...

Bob

 

[goombawaho]

So, fill me in here. You're saying the windows backup was USABLE by the Acronis recovery tool. I guess I figured it was totally independent of W7 backup/restore or in other words incompatible.

 

[BobMCT]

YES, the Windows 7 recovery would NOT read it, always failed. But the Acronis read it and restored it perfectly including the resizing for the smaller disk. Go figure. So guess who gets my money. Thanks.

 

[karlisi]

Thanks, BobMCT for sharing, very useful. There is explanation for it. Windows Image Backup stores image as .vhd file. Acronis TI 2013 can convert .vhd to Acronis .tib file format.

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[goombawaho]

Interesting. That might help someone else one day. Kind of surprised Acronis did that.

 

[rclarke250]

me too, never would have even tried it.

 

[BobMCT]

No kidding. But in Goombawaho's first response there was a small tidbit about using Acronis and I figured what they heck. And look what I showed. Hopefully this will help others in the same predicament.