Opening a Back Up file

gordon99 · 17 Jan 2013

I guess this question has been asked and answered a thousand times but please bear with me. My wife backs up all her files, which include many photos, onto an external hard drive using Windows 7 back up facility. She thinks she has lost some photos but would simply like to view some of those on the external hard drive. They are all on compressed files I believe. Would someone be good enough to tell me what one does to uncompress and open a backed up file to see what's in it, particularly if it's a photo. The word RESTORE seems to be mention a lot but, to me, that seems to involve putting a backed up file back onto the computer from where it was backed up which is not what is required. Any help please?

Bongo · 17 Jan 2013

Welcome to the Seven Forums

See if this tutorial will help you out Backup - Manually Extract Files from in Vista & Windows 7

Jerry

gordon99 · 17 Jan 2013

Thanks Jerry for your speedy answer to my question. I will give Option 1 a try first and see how I get on. I don't understand why Microsoft have not incorporated a straight forward unzip facility in their back up program; but perhaps there are very good reasons for this ommission.

Gordon

Kari · 18 Jan 2013

Here two tutorials, select the correct one depending on have you used normal backup or created a system image:

I noticed the first one of those tutorials is a bit outdated, here are additional instructions on how to easily and fast extract individual files or folders from Windows Backup. Screenshots from Windows 8 but it works and looks exactly like that on 7, too:

Backup folder has the same than your PC. Browse to it and double click to open dialog. Select Restore my files from this backup:
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Click Browse for files, add file(s) you want to restore, click Add Files:
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Click Next:
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Select location where you want to restore selected files, click Restore:
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You will see the progress:
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That's it:
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Kari

Brink · 18 Jan 2013

Hello Gordon, and welcome to Seven Forums.

In addition, you might try using the tutorial first for the recommended method to browse through the files in a Windows Backup.

Restore Backup User and System Files

The other methods posted above are fine, but should only be used if you can't restore files using this method since they are a bit more involved.

Hope this helps, :)
Shawn