Restoring files from a backup

[Bennie H Mineer]

Hello all...

My Vista hard drive failed, so with a new one, I installed vista with the recovery disks all went well.
Then I tried to get the documents, pictures etc. from a backup that I had made before the crash on
another drive connected by USB port..
The computer sees the drive and I can open it to look at the contents.
However when I use the vista restore it will not see the backup files. It says "no backup found on this computer".
So what am I missing here? I could copy those files manually and move them to the documents folder on the new drive, but that takes a lot of time and work to do that one at a time. There are a lot of them.

So what is the correct procedure to restore a backup to the new drive ?

I understand that the backup is a compressed file so does it have to be unzipped before moving them?
Almost all computer tech's recommend making backups in case of a hdd failure, but what good are they if you can't restore them when needed ???

Thanks for any information and help..

[renegade600]

you will not be able to recover the files unless you install the backup.

did you use windows backup or some third party backup software - if you used windows backup - boot to the vista disk, after a couple of screens, click on repair, you should be able to reinstall the backup from there. It will wipe the drive and install unless for some reason it is corrupted.

personally though I do a normal backup, I will copy the files I do not want to lose separately to another drive or disk.

[Bennie H Mineer]

Originally Posted by renegade600

you will not be able to recover the files unless you install the backup.

did you use windows backup or some third party backup software - if you used windows backup - boot to the vista disk, after a couple of screens, click on repair, you should be able to reinstall the backup from there. It will wipe the drive and install unless for some reason it is corrupted.

personally though I do a normal backup, I will copy the files I do not want to lose separately to another drive or disk.

I don't need to install the whole backup, just the documents.. like I said in my post, I have already installed vista on the new drive.. Just need to retrieve the documents. I used windows vista to do the backup. Looks as though I need a different program to do a backup rather than windows, something like Macrium Reflect or Acronis, huh?

But that don't explain why the vista backup and restore program can not find the backup on the usb connected disk.

[Bennie H Mineer]

I purchased Acronis some time ago and will use it for my backups from now on, it works great. The windows backup program stinks..