Trouble Restoring from WindowsImageBackup

My client's Win10 Pro computer died. Got a new Win10 Home Asus laptop. Trying to restore files from a WindowsSystemImage folder on his backup drive, but the Advanced Recovery tool doesn't recognize the external drive containing the ImageBackup folder. When I attempt to mount the ImageBackup image in Explorer, I get the following error - "The disk image isn't initialized, contains partitions that aren't recognizable, or contains volumes that haven't been assigned drive letters. Please use the Disk Management snap-in to make sure that the disk, partitions and volumes are in a usable state."

I have no idea what to do with this. lol. Please help.

another. solved one..
Recover Folders of Files from System Image?
...and another tutorial.
Mount or Unmount VHD or VHDX File in Windows 10

Your "The disk image isn't initialized..." error message is just telling you to go into Disk Manager and give it a drive letter.

Bree said:

another. solved one..
Recover Folders of Files from System Image?
...and another tutorial.
Mount or Unmount VHD or VHDX File in Windows 10

Your "The disk image isn't initialized..." error message is just telling you to go into Disk Manager and give it a drive letter.

Well, I mounted it. Assigned it a letter, and then Windows told me it needed to be formatted.

However, I did notice that when I mounted it in Disk Management, it came up as RAW instead of NTFS. Why would that be?

Probably because the file is corrupt. Once the VHD or VHDX file is mounted, I believe you can run regular disk repair tools on it and maybe recover bad partitions. What about the primary hard drive from the old computer?

Yeah.... that's my theory, too. Do we think it makes any difference if the WIB is on an internal drive? He's got plenty of space on a 2tb internal and it's currently on a 500gb ext.

Also, a colleague suggested an app called Acronis Home may be able to repair a corrupted WIB file. Any thoughts on that?