No drive letter when VHD attached via Disk Management

bigtimecharlie

Hi.

Repaired my slow W7 home premium laptop using the recovery partition.

Laptop is now much more responsive.

However, there are a few files that I want to get from a system image (April 2018) on external drive.

I've attached the VHD via disk management but I don't get a drive letter for the new disk ( disk 2 in my case).

I've attached the recovery partition VHD and it gets a drive letter and can thus be seen in explorer.

Any reason why my main drive not getting a drive letter or is there a way to assign a letter to it?

smuggler.ie

Cant say why it didn't get letter automagically, but you should be able to assign it from Disk Management:
Right click on disk(actual volume) and select "Change drive letter and paths..."
Click "Add", select available letter from drop-down menu.
OK

bigtimecharlie

There are no options available for me to change the drive letter if I right click.

I just get "create simple volume" and "properties"

smuggler.ie

bigtimecharlie wrote: »

There are no options available for me to change the drive letter if I right click.

I just get "create simple volume" and "properties"

You must be clicking on wrong place.
Try to the right, in the middle pane, just under blue line(not Disk2 on the left) or top pane under "Volume" on drive itself.

bigtimecharlie

I don't have a blue line on the right, I have a black line.

smuggler.ie

Can you post screenshot of you Disk Manager.
Black indicates unallocated space - no partition on that drive

bigtimecharlie

Yes the drive comes up as unallocted, trying to find out why.

smuggler.ie

How did you created this VHD ,what tools used?
Is this VHD can be read elsewhere?


Look like your system not able to read it or there is nothing to read.

bigtimecharlie

It's a standard windows system image on external HDD with a volume of 500gb.

Where else could I see what is on the VHD, there are plenty of photo's I need to recover?

smuggler.ie

Well, it should mount unless corrupted .

I almost certain you already tried to detach VHD, disconnect drive and start over again.


Were you able to mount it before?

Were you able to mount it on different PC?

bigtimecharlie

I have mounted a VHD before, but this is a new(ish) laptop as I've gone back to Factory. I have not mounted the current VHD as it was only created in April.

I will try it on another P.C. next week.

But

I also have backup files. How do I get at these without going through each one individually?

smuggler.ie

bigtimecharlie wrote: »

I have mounted a VHD before, but this is a new(ish) laptop as I've gone back to Factory. I have not mounted the current VHD as it was only created in April.

I will try it on another P.C. next week.

But

I also have backup files. How do I get at these without going through each one individually?

Once this was created using Win7 Backup, you restore from same utility.
Win 7 Backup and Restore give you option to restore single file or whole folder(including sub-folders), to origin location(keeping folder structure) or of your choice.
Would recommend restore to separate location to avoid overwriting existing data, then see what need to be copy/merge.
I believe Google/YouTube will have plenty of tutorials how-to. Familiarize yourself with small file/folder before proceed with full scale.

bigtimecharlie

Tried to mount the vhd onto another PC, still unallocated drive.

Have started with back up and restore and I was able to restore "my documents" as I'm a user both on the back up and the rebuilt laptop.

However, I had photos in the public directory and I can't see it on the back up. Only 4 folders for the 4 previous accounts. Where would the public folders be?

horgan_p

was the disk you made the vhd from encrypted ?

smuggler.ie

As much i can remember, Win 7 backup doesn't take public folders by default.
you would need to specify folder to be backed up manually.

smuggler.ie

Correction to myself.


Public folders are indeed included in default backup. Ran this on virtual machine.

smuggler.ie

horgan_p wrote: »

was the disk you made the vhd from encrypted ?

This shouldn't matter.

If Bitlocker used it would be transparent to Windows Backup and Restore as you would have system drive unlocked to start Windows in first place and then you would have to unlock external drive(if bit-locked) to access folders/files(VHD) on it.

Where i cannot confirm this on my virtual environment and i not used this type setup on physical machine, here is link to thread where someone claim doing it with no issues.
Please share if you have different experience.

Not sure how it would work if third party encryption tools used, but should be similar.

smuggler.ie

smuggler.ie wrote: »

Where i cannot confirm this on my virtual environment and i not used this type setup on physical machine

Now i can confirm that encrypted by Bitlocker system drive can be backed up by Backup and Recovery utility in Win7, VHD can be accessed from any PC(no encryption carried over) VHD attaching OK and files/folders available from VHD. Tested on physical Win7 machine.


@bigtimecharlie
Looks like your VHD is corrupt. Regards other backup file you have - if was created with default utility settings(aka "recommended") Public folders should be included.

bigtimecharlie

I was able to use backup and restore to find the old system image on external hard drive. I then decided to restore the PC to that date and then I would copy my public folders separately to the external hard drive.

But.....

I forget to plug in the power supply when the restore process was running and the laptop would only power up to start a recovery from boot disks.

So I have start all over again.

Thanks for all your help so far. A busy weekend ahead.

smuggler.ie

At least you got where to get you data back from.
Good luck

bigtimecharlie

Tried to mount the vhd. It did get an allocation letter. But the drive needed to be formatted before use.

I'm now restoring from an earlier image with the power cord plugged in. Hope I can get the files I want.

smuggler.ie

Arm yourself with patients. Restoring 500GB will be lengthy process.
Note that your system, after successful restore will(should) be same as at the time image was taken - all "crap" that was slowing your system will/might be present and will/might have effect again.
Let me know how it goes and how long it take.

bigtimecharlie

Right, restore from previous image has also failed as well as the vhd not mounting from external hard drive. Must be external hard drive issue.

I'm back reinstalling the factory software from boot disks.

I have to get access to the public folders on the external hard drive before it's chucked to the bin.

smuggler.ie

What error you get on restore operation failure if any?


If avail, you could try copy system image to internal drive on other PC, or if avail, you could try to install your external drive to a PC as internal(over SATA) and see if this make difference on restore operation. Direct SATA connection would be more reliable than USB.

Make disk as network share and attempt to recover over Ethernet(more reliable than WiFi)
Here is tutorial how-to: Windows 7 Backup and Restore
Here is tutorial how-to: Windows7 Bare Metal Restore using a system image
See if this will shed more light on process and help with recovery.


Third party tools like Easeus or similar could be tried to see if VHD can be repaired or files from VHD can be retrieved. Use with caution, better on copy of VHD if avail. Keeping original VHD untouched might give you more chances for further recovery options.


Your current situation, unfortunately, proving that backup is only good if you are able to recover data from it.

bigtimecharlie

I have my laptop running W7 for the past week after being restored from boot disks.

Have downloaded easeus and it does find file's on the vhd. Will have to pay to get the data I need.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Capt'n Midnight

vhd or vhdx file ?

if it's vhd try mounting a copy of it in virtualbox, even if it doesn't boot you could try a linux bootable cd image to see files on it

bigtimecharlie

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

vhd or vhdx file ?

if it's vhd try mounting a copy of it in virtualbox, even if it doesn't boot you could try a linux bootable cd image to see files on it

Thanks for the tip but that's way above my software knowledge.

I'll just pay for a license to copy what I need.

bigtimecharlie

Update:

Finally got the files from the .vhd on my back-up.

The long version: I purchased the license for EaseUS data recovery, took ages to scan but I still could not see the folder structure on the .vhd. I contacted tech support and eventually they remote connected via team viewer. 20 minutes later still no go with their software, so they installed WinHex. Some configuration and then the folder structure was available. The files were copied to the laptop C: drive and all is good.

Just curious as WinHex seem's like a general purpose software program rather than a program that cost's €80 and doesn't do the job. What's people's view on this? I know that they have to load and configure WinHex but is that alone worth €80?