Recovering from WindowsImageBackup on a Flash Drive

FC Brandt, sorry but the later versions of Windows create a .VHDX system image archive file which can only be recovered using Microsoft tools.  There is no current version of Acronis True Image that can work with .VHDX files.  

Acronis True Image version 2012 was the last version that had support for Windows 7 .VHD files but later versions removed this functionality as Microsoft moved to the .VHDX file format.

Please see webpage: How to Restore System Image Backups on Windows 7, 8, and 10

Thanks, Steve. I'd already read that page and many more like them a couple of times over. :-)  Saw Acronis mentioned a couple of times, but, yeah, most of the info is pretty old. Thanks for the extra info and confirmation. 

FC Brandt:

If you just want to recover files from your Windows system image you can do the following to mount your .vhdx files in Windows Explorer:

1. Start Disk Magagement
2. In the ACTION menu, choose "Attach VHD". Browse to the location of your Windows Image Backup and select one of the .vhdx files
3. While still in Windows Explorer, right-click on the newly-attached VHD image and assign it a drive letter
4. The contents of the image appear in Windows Explorer

However, if you want to restore the entire Windows System Image (Bare Metal Restore) the most-frequent reason that the process fails (cannot locate the system image) is that the file locations have been changed. The folder produced by creating a system image "WindowsImageBackup" must reside in the root of the drive that it is stored on for it to be found. Judging from your comments about how much you've read about this problem, you probably already knew this.

Thanks, Mark. The extra info you provided may come in handy in the future. I probably did come across it in one of the many old posts/articles I found, but it's good to have it repeated). 

My main issue was that I made the backup to a Flash Drive, and the recovery process refused to recognize it. I just didn't want to buy a new external, nor have to empty out one that I already had...but that's what I did in the end. Copied the folder from the flash drive to a big ol' spinner, and it worked fine. 

I sure learned a lot in trying to circumvent the necessary process, though. :-)

Thanks!

Another user had posted that they mounted .vhdx (of a system image created by Windows) from within Windows disk management and assigned it a drive letter.  The were then able to back that up with Acronis and then use Acronis to restore that image to a bootable VM (which technically means it should be possible to do this to a physical hard drive as well).  Kind of the long way of converting a .vhdx to an Acronis .tib, but do-able.  The forum search is messed up so I'm having a hard time finding that post for reference, but if I come across it, I'll paste it here. 

Even though Acronis no longer mentions the ability to recovery from .vhd (not .vhdx), pretty sure it's still possible as I've done it in 2015 and have a feeling the recovery media can still do this, but I only have Windows 10 now and no more .vhd's.  I'll see if I can get one to test.  Also curious about converting .vhdx to .vhd and seeing how that goes.  

This looks like another work-a-round method referenced by Mustang, where you could try converting the .vhdx to .vhd and then restoring it. 

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/89286#comment-269205

If you want to continue testing, it is easy to convert .vhdx to .vhd using Windows PowerShell. Open a PowerShell window and enter:

Convert-VHD -Path "{path to vhdx file}.vhdx" -DestinationPath "{path to output file}.vhd"

I suspect that the following method would also work if you have a Windows Image Backup to restore and you are only interested in restoring the most recent image. Note that I haven't tried it, but it seems reasonable.

The .vhdx file in a Windows image contains the most-recent copy of a disk partition. Older images are incremental copies and are stored in shadow copy storage on the disk, so to restore an older image requires the shadow copy files, the catalog files and all of the .xml files that are written into the folder "WindowsImageBackup" when an image is created. Only the .vhdx file should be needed to recover the most recent backup.

If you're trying to restore to a disk that can physically be removed from the PC or laptop and installed in a Windows 7, 8, or 10 PC, then one could try this:

1. Remove the disk from the target PC and install it in a working PC.
2. If the disk to be restored to has the desired partition layout, then format each partition to clear out the old contents. If the disk does not have the desired partition layout, use Disk Management to create the layout, then format each partition. On MBR disks, make sure that the System Reserved partition, if present, is marked as active; otherwise the Windows partition should be marked as active.
3. Attach each .vhdx file and assign them drive letters.
4. Use Windows Explorer to copy the contents of each .vhdx file to its respective partition.
5. Remove the disk from the working PC and install it in the target PC.
6. Boot to test. If the disk signature hasn't changed then there shouldn't be any boot issues and the original drive letters should remain. Otherwise, if the disk is new and needed to be initialized, the PC may not boot the first time. The automatic repair option on a Windows Repair disk should be able to fix the BCD and enable booting.

hello friend Bobbo_3C0X1 did you find the user publishing the .vhd (from a system image created by Windows) converting from .vhdx to Acronis .tib ????  thanks for the answer in advance.