Windows will not recognise my backup image on external hard drive?

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  1. Posts : 45
    windows 7 home premium 64 bit
       #1

    Windows will not recognise my backup image on external hard drive?


    Hey guys, I restored my computer from the windows 7 CD that came with my computer and when I went to restore my computer to a backup that I had put on my external hard drive, windows will say that it cannot find any backups. Is there anyway I can fix this? I know my backup works because I first restored to my backup image and it worked fine, but I cancelled it half way thinking it was reversible.
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  2. Posts : 45
    windows 7 home premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #2

    please help!!!
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  3. Posts : 450
    Windows 7
       #3

    Be clearer. You created a SYSTEM IMAGE of your OS-related drive(s) using the Windows 7 built-in Backup and Restore screen/process and placed that image on a target drive consisting of an external USB drive?

    You then booted off of your Windows CD/DVD into the Recovery Environment of which one of the options is: Restore your computer from a System Image you created earlier.

    You went ahead and chose the System Image (the screen defaults to the LAST system image you took) that was sitting on your external USB drive and began the restore process?

    You cancelled this restore halfway through. How did you do this? Is there a CANCEL button during the restore process? If you did, I would guess that you OS image is now unusable as half will be from a system image from X time ago, and the other half will be what your OS looked like yesterday.

    When you fired up the Windows CD/DVD again for Recovery Environment, did you have your external USB drive already attached? If not, there's a REFRESH button (I think) on that screen whereby you could NOW connect that USB drive, click Refresh and would hope to see that system image that resides upon that USB drive.
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  4. Posts : 45
    windows 7 home premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #4

    JimLewandowski said:
    Be clearer. You created a SYSTEM IMAGE of your OS-related drive(s) using the Windows 7 built-in Backup and Restore screen/process and placed that image on a target drive consisting of an external USB drive? yes

    You then booted off of your Windows CD/DVD into the Recovery Environment of which one of the options is: Restore your computer from a System Image you created earlier. i used the CD and started fresh because I messed up the OS

    You went ahead and chose the System Image (the screen defaults to the LAST system image you took) that was sitting on your external USB drive and began the restore process? yes

    You cancelled this restore halfway through. How did you do this? Is there a CANCEL button during the restore process? If you did, I would guess that you OS image is now unusable as half will be from a system image from X time ago, and the other half will be what your OS looked like yesterday. i clicked cancel and then everytime i started my computer it just said missing Operating system, so then i restored a new OS from the CD/DVD

    When you fired up the Windows CD/DVD again for Recovery Environment, did you have your external USB drive already attached? If not, there's a REFRESH button (I think) on that screen whereby you could NOW connect that USB drive, click Refresh and would hope to see that system image that resides upon that USB drive.
    At this point the windows cd just installed the OS it didnt give me an option to restore
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  5. Posts : 450
    Windows 7
       #5

    So, you're saying the PRIOR time you did this, you COULD select the "restore computer from system image you created earlier", but this time, it just installs Windows 7 with no other option??
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  6. Posts : 45
    windows 7 home premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #6

    JimLewandowski said:
    So, you're saying the PRIOR time you did this, you COULD select the "restore computer from system image you created earlier", but this time, it just installs Windows 7 with no other option??
    ok so basically i messed my computer up with this thing called deep freeze...so through the safe mode menu i clicked restore computer and clicked the image to backup that was on my external HDD. Then i cancelled it halfway and it messed computer up even more. Nothing i could do at this point. so i inserted the windows CD/DVD and just installed windows from scratch, then windows doesnt recognize my back up on my external hdd but i think it has something to do with the drivers and all that
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  7. Posts : 450
    Windows 7
       #7

    Interesting point. I've wondered about this.

    I would have thought, prior to your post, that when you launch Win RE, it simply looks for all attached drives (fixed and removable NONflash drives) and if it finds the WindowsImageBackup folder in the root of that drive, it uses the contents to build the "system image" list.

    Since your fresh install can not see your external drive's system image, it implies that maybe this whole process needs the C partition (OS) : \ System Volume Information folder which contains information about the system images as well as Restore Points.
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  8. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #8

    There is a way to salvage your image. But it is a pretty long procedure and you need a running system from which you can accdess the image. If you have no other option. I will be glad to explain it. But as I said, it is rather involved - but it works.

    PS: It will be even more involved if you had a 100MB system partition.
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  9. Posts : 45
    windows 7 home premium 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #9

    whs said:
    There is a way to salvage your image. But it is a pretty long procedure and you need a running system from which you can accdess the image. If you have no other option. I will be glad to explain it. But as I said, it is rather involved - but it works.

    PS: It will be even more involved if you had a 100MB system partition.
    well right now on my laptop i can click into my external hdd and see the back up...only windows restore doesn't recognize it.
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  10. Posts : 450
    Windows 7
       #10

    whs said:
    There is a way to salvage your image. But it is a pretty long procedure and you need a running system from which you can accdess the image. If you have no other option. I will be glad to explain it. But as I said, it is rather involved - but it works.

    PS: It will be even more involved if you had a 100MB system partition.
    Could he rename his current WindowsImageBackup (or run my script to automate the renaming of the computer node to add the date) so the current image won't get deleted.

    Then, rerun a new System Image. This would get the shadow info into the OS System Volume Information folder.

    Then manually copy the 2 .vhd files from his renamed (original) WindowsImageBackup into the new WindowsImageBackup\computername\Backup ...... folder?
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