full disk backup validated ok but contents empty!

hi everyone

ive recently had a few problems with my packard bell laptop with a corrupt windows installation (it wouldnt even let me create a recovery cd) so ive had to do a factory restore from the restore partition on the hard disk.

before i did though, i made a full disk and partition backup of the drive (2 partitions - c having windows and all its contents, and d being the recovery partition). this said it was successful having created a backup file of around 30gb (the recovery partition being around 8gb).

i now want to retrieve certain contents of the c drive and so have tried by doing a restore to select the certain contents i want, and have also tried viewing it by mounting it.

however, when i try to restore it says drive c is empty yet the recovery partition side is intact. if i try viewing the contents by mounting the backup file i get a similar sort of thing, the partition side can be viewed yet the windows side it says has to be formatted to be read.

when i validate the backup it seems ok too. i cannot understand though how when it claimed a backup was successful and it creates a backup file of 30gb. yet it seems as though it has only backed up the 8gb recovery partition and left the windows partition empty?

has anybody any ideas as to why and any possible workarounds? im dreading the thought of losing the date because of it!

thanks