Opening a Back Up file

[gordon99]

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]

Welcome to the Seven Forums

See if this tutorial will help you out http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174270-backup-manually-extract-files-vista-windows-7-a.html

Jerry

 

[gordon99]

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]

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

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174270-backup-manually-extract-files-vista-windows-7-a.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/24771-system-image-extract-files-using-disk-management.html

I noticed the first one of those tutorials is a bit outdated, here are additional instructions on how to easily and fast extract individual files or folders from Windows Backup.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:

1. 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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2. Click Browse for files, add file(s) you want to restore, click Add Files:
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3. Click Next:
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4. Select location where you want to restore selected files, click Restore:
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5. You will see the progress:
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6. That's it:
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Kari

 

[Brink]

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.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/648-restore-backup-user-system-files.html

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