System Image - Extract Files Using Disk Management

AFAIK, the "modified" time stamp should not be updated any time a image is mounted. I do not know anything about the mounting process but it would sound weird to me in case such a process would change anything in the mounted image. As far as the image is just read for some navigation or file copy through Explorer.

Several people reported here the same behavior for a not initialized drive when read-only mode is checked.

Brink, I am not sure to understand your question: I have only one VHD file in any Backup* folder under WindowsImageBackup. Size is always around 25 GB.

Brink said:

There will be a VHD file for each hard disk that was included in the system image backup when it was created. If you only have the Windows C: drive, then that would be why you only have the one VHD file.

If changes are made with the files from the mounted VHD, then that would change the time stamp.

Bumping an old Tutorial here... so if we are to mount a drive to extract files, but the best practice is to not touch the ownership and permissions on the image, how can we access the files, in particular the Users folders where everything is situated?

Right now the only workaround I see is run Notepad as admin, then use the Open File dialog like Explorer. Is there a better way? Running Windows Explorer as admin doesn't work. Also for Windows 10, the "Exit Explorer" then relaunch as admin doesn't work either.

This tutorial is quite informative in obtaining information from previous images. Contemplate the REVERSE? It is possible to insert files into a VHD after the VHD has been mounted. If the VHD is from a previous system image will the inserted file become part of that older image even though the GlobalCatalog may not even have the info on the new file?

I ask this as a hypothetical because I can imagine that some system or program file has become corrupt, but you do not know when. So the possibility that previous images have the same corrupt file exists. Can I avoid restoring the old image, correcting the file (saving it as filename2), and then remaking the image? If I can simply insert the correct file to the VHD, I have circumvented some time loss in restoring & remaking the old image.

My guess as being an engineer/physicist the above would violate some conservation law & that it cannot be done. But I thought I would ask since there resides some experience & knowledge that supersedes mine on these topics at this site.