Windows 7 Backup Recovery

I have a friend who's Windows install failed. Someone formatted and reinstalled the OS and didn't save his data. Luckily (or so I thought) he had done a backup through the windows backup utility. So I was trying to see if I could recover some files from the backup but here's what I am running into.

When I use the Control Panel -> Backup and Restore interface I see a link that says (select another backup to restore files from. When I do that nothing comes up. It can't find a backup.

So I searched the web and found some posts talking about using disk manager to attach the VHD file from within the backup as a drive. I thought that was cool except when the VHD is attached it shows up as unallocated space. I'm pretty sure if I initialize the disk it's going to kill all the data on it.

So what it comes down to is...is there a way to get the data back from his backup?

Well since I can't delete posts for some reason and goofed initially I tried doing something and we'll see if this works.

Assuming you have a secondary drive or external and Windows seems to only care about Networked drives how about this. Right click the drive with the backup and go to Properties. Go to the sharing tab and select "Advanced Sharing". Fill the check mark at the top and remember the drive letter (i.e. mine is E at this moment). Now Start>Right Click Computer > Map Network drive.

Type in the \\[name of PC]\[drive letter from earlier]

ex. mine is \\Admin-PC\e

That should create a mapped drive on your machine and hopefully will trick Windows into searching that location for any images. You can find the name of your PC by going into Control Panel\System and Security\System

When you Browse Network Locations you'll have to type in \\Admin-PC\e

Maybe that will work? I mean it showed it searching for me, but I had no images and it would be difficult to reproduce your circumstances because a fresh install has no history of that previous backup. FYI I would never trust Windows and its bare bone backup/restore process. Load up Macrium Reflect Free and schedule that puppy for future use.

I'll give the network share a shot and see what happens.

I'd also try to set the share from the above to the exact folder where the backup is just in case it doesn't scan the whole drive and then likewise you'd have to type the extra directory details when mapping the drive and then scanning it using the Backup and Restore Browse Network Drive portion.

Good luck. Hope it works.

No luck with the network recovery. I can browse to the folder which was a step in the right direction but it says there's nothing there. I tried the main folder and the two subfolders. Neither work.

Are there any other suggestions out there? I can't believe this data is completely gone.

I just tried mounting the VHD on another computer and it worked. Not sure why one machine works and another doesn't. Both the same OS. Different hardware. Well, I'm happy it works.