List of stored files in a backup

Hello Ulrich, the answer to your question will depend on what type of backup image you have created?

If you have created a Files & Folders backup image, then the only options you have are to open the backup image in Windows Explorer and then to explore through the contents folder by folder with a reduced set of options available to use.

If you have created a Disks or Partitions backup image, then you have the additional option of being able to mount the image as a drive letter, which in turn allows you to run any available tools to analyse the contents of the mounted drive letter.

For example, you could open a Command Prompt (as Administrator) to the new drive letter, then run the command DIR to export a list of all files to a text file.  E.G.  DIR /S > MyFiles.TXT

C:\Windows\System32>dir /?
Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]
  [/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/R] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

  [drive:][path][filename]
              Specifies drive, directory, and/or files to list.

  /A          Displays files with specified attributes.
  attributes   D  Directories                R  Read-only files
               H  Hidden files               A  Files ready for archiving
               S  System files               I  Not content indexed files
               L  Reparse Points             -  Prefix meaning not
  /B          Uses bare format (no heading information or summary).
  /C          Display the thousand separator in file sizes.  This is the
              default.  Use /-C to disable display of separator.
  /D          Same as wide but files are list sorted by column.
  /L          Uses lowercase.
  /N          New long list format where filenames are on the far right.
  /O          List by files in sorted order.

  sortorder    N  By name (alphabetic)       S  By size (smallest first)
               E  By extension (alphabetic)  D  By date/time (oldest first)
               G  Group directories first    -  Prefix to reverse order
  /P          Pauses after each screenful of information.
  /Q          Display the owner of the file.
  /R          Display alternate data streams of the file.
  /S          Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.
  /T          Controls which time field displayed or used for sorting
  timefield   C  Creation
              A  Last Access
              W  Last Written
  /W          Uses wide list format.
  /X          This displays the short names generated for non-8dot3 file
              names.  The format is that of /N with the short name inserted
              before the long name. If no short name is present, blanks are
              displayed in its place.
  /4          Displays four-digit years

Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable.  Override
preset switches by prefixing any switch with - (hyphen)--for example, /-W.

Not that I'm aware.  YOu can double click your backup in Windows File explorer and it will open like a mounted drive that you can navigate and look for files, but that's it as far as I know. 

If using a folder/file backup task, perhaps you could create a pre-backup command as a .bat file to list the files in the directory and output it to a text document in the same folder before the backup runs though?

For instance.  Say you want to know everything in a folder on the root of C: called "file_share".  In command prompt you would type:

Dir "C:\File_Share"

That would output all of the contents to the screen.  You could instead, output it to a text file in the same directory or somewhere else using the "greater than" sign and a new text file called "foldercontents.txt" like this:

Dir "C:\File_Share" > "C:\File_Share\FolderContents.txt"

Copy such a command into notepad and save it as a .bat.  Then point the Pre-command of your backup to run the newly created .bat first and your backup will now have this file in it so that you can open it and review what is listed there.

Mabye not the most efficient, but it would work.  It won't however, give you just the files that were modified in that particular incremental version and would list all files in that directory (which should still technically be accurate for what can be recovered, but just not was backed up specifically in that incremental or differential backup).

To be clear, there is no simple way to identify which files were backed up the last backup.

In theory, you could mount or restore the backup before the last backup, and mount/restore the last image of the backed up disk onto another drive. Then you would use file/folder comparison tools or sync software, but these tools might not work well with system files and folders.