New SSD, Windows does not find system image

This is an ongoing problem that Windows has and I have read posts from 100's of users with this issue. This problem is now my problem. I have used the native restore function for years without a hitch until now. I have read about all the possible things that interfere with the finding of the image and most include drivers and naming of folders.

I have spent days on this and was about to give up. I remembered one old drive that had a system image on it, so I decided to pop it in and see what happens. Lo and behold! Windows sees it. Unfortunately it is old and of little use.

I noticed that instead of a folder icon and "WindowsImageBackup," there is a disc icon along with my computer name in CAPS. The image, bootsect, and mediaID.bin all saved to the root of the drive, without the "WindowsBackupImage" folder, and this is what is being recognized. (I'm sorry, I can't upload an image) This may shed some light on a lot of users' problems. I may have most recently done my latest image save as a "backup" and not a disc image. I'm going to see if I can get my most recent image to be recognized.

So I just created a new system image and when I attempt to access it to restore it, it is not found.

Welcome to the forum. It's not clear what your doing do you have an image from an old drive and you want to restore it to a blank new SSD? If it's a new SSD your better doing a clean install as SSD need extra settings in Windows

I'm not sure what happened my introduction and the background; where's my ettiquette? I was half asleep when I posted this, as I am now. I work in the medical field and work odd hours. In my spare time I waste time with some nerdy hobbies. I'm upgrading my SSD, from an older SSD. I've done this process several times before, so I'm not sure what prompted this.



It wouldn't be a bad idea to start with a clean install, but I have several reasons for wanting to clone my old drive. If/when I upgrade to Win 10 I will do so, but for now I'm a Win 7 enthusiast. It took me a long time to figure this out, but the backups that are not being read by the recovery center are in a folder called "WindowsImageBackup." The image that IS being recognized (which it seems was accidentally deleted) had the folder contents in the root of the drive, and the backup was not in VHD format. I don't know what format it was, but I've given up on restoring a .vhd backup. Any help on getting a saved image restored would be much appreciated.

I don't have enough data available on my wireless plan to download all of the installation files for the programs if I do a clean install. Also, many of the drivers and whatnot are mixed up and jumbled together on cd's or in a folder. I don't remember anymore what drivers and utilities go to what device. Also, I just want to "conquer" this problem. I like the challenge.


I didn't get the restoration completely installed, but I did get windows to recognize the image and strangely some of the files were installed, but not enough for an identical image. This is strange to me. Anyways, I found two things that may have played a factor in the image not being recognized.



1._ The drives had to be plugged into the same SATA port for both the origin backup and the destination of the C: drive. In shuffling them around I moved them to different ports.


2._ I replaced the CMOS battery. I was getting some funky timestamps and some programs weren't working because of clock errors.



I'm playing around with creating a recovery disk as well as opening the recovery environment at a command prompt with windows open. It's strange even the new backups aren't being recognized. I'm debating about downloading Macrium. I've used Windows imaging software in the past with no problems, I don't get it.