What will restore these backups?

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Rikkitic

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#203175 20-Sep-2016 16:16

I need to get at some very old backups on an external usb drive. I am fairly certain the backups were created under XP. One is a file backup, with the files in a large number of zip files accompanied by catalogue files. The other is an image backup in a .vhd file, also accompanied by a catalogue file.

For whatever reason, I cannot seem to access either of these backups by any means I have been able to think of. I have a machine with XP on it, but the Backup and Restore function only seems to work with .bkf files. I can’t get it to recognise anything else. It just says I don’t have any backups on the drive and doesn’t show any other options.

I don’t know what else might work with the zip files, but Windows isn’t giving me any help. They are in a folder with the computer’s name on it. In that folder is a folder named Backup Set followed by the date and a number. In the Backup Set folder are two folders. One is named Backup Files followed by the same date and number. That contains the zip files. The other folder is named Catalogs and contains a file named GlobalCatalog.wbcat.

The image backup uses a similar layout and was probably created by the same backup program, whatever that is. I read that the .vhd file could be mounted and viewed in Windows 7, but when I tried this with Disk Management I got an error that the sector size is not supported and could not go any further. The backup drive is a 4 tb usb drive.

Can anyone give me any help with this? I just need to know what backup program would have created these files so I can restore them to a hard drive.

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ubergeeknz

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#1636646 20-Sep-2016 16:20

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_programs/how-do-i-open-wbcat-files/d68c9001-0f0f-4791-830f-165f2aefe224?auth=1

http://az4n6.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/windows-backup-and-restore.html

These might help? Seems like maybe backups were made on Vista or Win 7

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Rikkitic

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#1636675 20-Sep-2016 16:52

Thanks. This looks promising. I will have to study it and check it out properly. I do also have Vista and Win 7 on other machines so anything is possible but I really did think these were XP backups. If not I may be looking at the wrong files anyway.

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ubergeeknz

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#1636679 20-Sep-2016 16:56

Oh and this ;) http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-can-i-not-mount-a-vhd-file-made-with-windows/d3918d75-a7e8-4b77-bf61-cabc449208f0

1101

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#1638149 21-Sep-2016 11:48

Rikkitic:

I need to get at some very old backups on an external usb drive. I am fairly certain the backups were created under XP.

From memory, some windows had different backup systems/programs between home & pro . Just to complicate it.

XP Pro uses a Veritas based backup system (I just checked it) ,creates a .bkf . XP Home may be different, but wont be a VHD.
The hard part is finding out what program, and version no. , was used to create the backups , they may not be compatible with other backup programs to restore

At the worst, you could try just unzipping all the zips. It will make a mess to sort through , as last resort(Ive had to do that once)
The USB drive may have come with the backup software that was used. Try downloading the backup software from the drives manufacturer (Seagate, WD etc)

PolicyGuy

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#1638156 21-Sep-2016 12:00

If you look at the files with something like Notepad, there may be some clues in the first few hundred bytes as to which package created them.

"Worth a crack, Nigel"

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#1642181 28-Sep-2016 23:45

ubergeeknz: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-windows_programs/how-do-i-open-wbcat-files/d68c9001-0f0f-4791-830f-165f2aefe224?auth=1

http://az4n6.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/windows-backup-and-restore.html

These might help? Seems like maybe backups were made on Vista or Win 7

ubergeeknz: Oh and this ;) http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/why-can-i-not-mount-a-vhd-file-made-with-windows/d3918d75-a7e8-4b77-bf61-cabc449208f0

I agree with ubergeeknz. The layout of files sounds very much like the builtin backup utility for Windows 7. Please confirm if you had success to restore your backups?

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richms

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#1642183 28-Sep-2016 23:55

The VHD will not mount if it is on an external drive with 4k sectors, most older drives over 2TB will have that so that they could work with XP. check the reported sector size, and if it is 4k then that will cause that error.

After my last fiasco with dealing with these stupid drives that date from an era when people would not stop using obsolete crap and needed to have bodgey changes to get them working, and not being able to use the drives someone directed me to this WD formatting tool

http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3868

It will _apparantly_ let you format the drive in a non XP compatible mode that will pass the drives native 512 byte sectors out to the host PC, disabling the size translation needed for XP. But it will reformat the drive and I have never done it since I have already schucked all my externals from the bad old days and am using them internally so no sector size screwing around is happening.

Richard rich.ms

Rikkitic

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#1642419 29-Sep-2016 10:09

Do other people also have this? Something goes wrong, you start working on that problem, then a whole series of unrelated things also start going wrong that pull you further and further away from the original problem. Since I posted about this, my graphics card started giving me grief, then my keyboard failed. I spent the last days trying to pinpoint the display problem. It seems to be better now, but I still don't know if I have fixed it. Now I have to get back to the keyboard. I am operating in emergency mode at the moment with a truly crappy MS wireless thing. If I ever get everything working again, I will return to the backup issue.

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#1642502 29-Sep-2016 11:43

Rikkitic: Do other people also have this? Something goes wrong, you start working on that problem, then a whole series of unrelated things also start going wrong that pull you further and further away from the original problem.

For me, it's more that I have to fix three other issues first so that I can fix the original issue properly.

Sorry to hear about your problems.

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Rikkitic

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#1642632 29-Sep-2016 14:20

There is a new chapter to my story. I more or less fixed the things that had distracted me so went back to the original problem. I have rooms full of legacy crap and I found an old working XP drive along with an old PC. After checking that it booted, I hooked up another old IDE drive that had died, which is the reason I was trying to resuscitate ancient backups, just to see if I could coax it to mount with Winhex so I could do a low-level check on any remaining contents (something I have done in the past).

To my surprise chkdsk kicked in when I booted, found a load of bad sectors on the dead drive, fixed them and suddenly the drive was readable again! So the need to find a backup has diminished.

I am now curious to see what backups I have and whether I can read them, but this project has dropped down the priority list since I have access again to the drive I wanted. When I get to it all I will post an update here. Thanks for thinking with me, everyone, and thanks especially for the helpful links. I have learned a lot, even if it is all outdated.

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1101

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#1643227 30-Sep-2016 11:31

Rikkitic:

Do other people also have this? Something goes wrong, you start working on that problem, then a whole series of unrelated things also start going wrong that pull you further and further away from the original problem.

yes, often (with other peoples PC's)

The worst was a very expensive 27" allinone PC :fixing a winupdate issue: hard drive started to fail, them the motherboard failed
motherboard issues was a common(ish) fault with this model , so no replacement motherboards available , AllInOne was a write off.

Just a bad look the the MB failed when I was working on other issues.

ubergeeknz

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#1643232 30-Sep-2016 11:35

Rikkitic:

Do other people also have this? Something goes wrong, you start working on that problem, then a whole series of unrelated things also start going wrong that pull you further and further away from the original problem. Since I posted about this, my graphics card started giving me grief, then my keyboard failed. I spent the last days trying to pinpoint the display problem. It seems to be better now, but I still don't know if I have fixed it. Now I have to get back to the keyboard. I am operating in emergency mode at the moment with a truly crappy MS wireless thing. If I ever get everything working again, I will return to the backup issue.

All the time. There's a great xkcd on this too (of course)

XKCD: Success