Windows 7 - Finding C drive files in system image

I had an impending hard drive failure and ran backup to a USB external hard drive. I put the new hard drive in and ran restore. However, in terms of data files, all I got was the desktop stuff. There were some data files on the C drive that didn't show up. In the backup files on the external drive there is a system image file that is VHD in which may exist my files. It's a 45 gig file, so I can't just open it. Is there a way to expand that file to see the sub-folders?

Yes, you can mount it in Disk Mgmt: choose Attach VHD on File tab, then browse into WindowsImageBackup folder to choose each VHD file. If you don't tick "Read Only" you should be able to copy files out.

To dismount rightclick the panel to the left of the drive it creates in Disk Mgmt to Dismount VHD.

You can also boot the Windows 7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD to Recover Using an Image to the new HD.

Welcome to the forum,

This tutorial will show you how to attach the VHD so you can see it's contents,

Virtual Hard Disk - Create and Attach VHD Start at step 4.

Here's how to unattach the VHD Virtual Hard Disk - Unattach and Delete VHD Note step 6, if you do not want to delete the VHD when unattaching.

Sometimes you must untick read only to attach the drive even for browsing otherwise you may get a mounted unallocated drive. This only ever seems to be a problem the first time the drive is mounted.
Inserting files into the mounted image is tempting fate if you ever want to recover from the image.