Hi Brink. Thanks for your brilliant tutorials.
I'm using W10 64-bit and its W7 Backup and Restore with an external 2TB hard drive for backup.
With the aid of your tutorial I have mounted the .vhdx file for the C: drive system image as Drive M:, but when I try to view the contents of M: File Manager reports "This folder is empty". The image file size on the backup drive is 72.3 GB and the space used on virtual drive M: is only 9.7 MB of 17.9 MB capacity. The difference is suspiciously high to say the least. Both the real and the external hard drives are NTFS and 512 bytes per sector.

I wonder if the problem could be related to VHD initialisation. I don't recall whether I chose MBR or GPT partition style, but I have a vague recollection of reading that GPT might be needed for UEFI. Would the wrong choice be accepted, and would it result in the above symptoms?

Also, probably a minor point at present, but when I detach M:, either manually via Disk Management or by shutting down, the system seems to remember the attachment as M: and I no longer need to initialise. Does this mean I could run out of drive letters? Is there a way of completely removing this association? Do you mind if I suggest that this area be included in your tutorial if it has general relevance? My only other reference for this has been Windows 10 Inside Out, Bott, et al, Microsoft Press, 2015 - helpful as far as it goes.

Thanks very much.

Hi, and thanks for your reply.

There is no problem with File Backups. It is the System Image Backup .vhdx file which I am trying to view, using it to mount a VHD (Drive M:) which appears empty to File Manager. As you suggested I had a good look at the W7 tutorial for file mounting, and explored some of its links, but to no avail.

I also tried to mount the VHD with Diskpart from elevated command prompt: Diskpart; select vdisk file=filename.vhdx; attach vdisk. There was no need to assign a drive letter as Windows remembered it, which is annoying. M: was again empty.

Then, Windows PowerShell: Mount-VHD -Path "[location of vhd]". This cmdlet failed with error message "Mount-VHD is not recognised as the name of a cmdlet ...". Googling this, I found this could be due to the absence of a Hyper-V module for Windows PowerShell. Now, I know that Hyper-V Virtualization does not come with W10 Home but does with W10 Pro. Could my problem be related? Could it be that the image file is vdhx rather than vdh which I assume was the format in W7? I am out of my depth here, and don't want to experiment without advice.

Out of interest I checked UEFI Bios and found Virtualisation Technology to be disabled, and Hyper-V missing from the Programs and Features list in Control Panel. With some trepidation I tried Enabling Virtualisation. Programs and Features list was unchanged, as was the PowerShell outcome and the zero content of M: after attaching via Disk Management. I returned Virtualisation to Disabled.

Drive M:'s properties show its partition type to be GUID, not MBR.

Grateful for any further thoughts. Thanks.

Yes. There are three .vhdx files in the image backup folder:

<GUID Filename.vhdx>: (C: Drive, I assume) 75,845,632 KB The one I've been using.
<GUID Filename.vhdx>: (Windows Recovery, I assume) 526,336 KB
Esp.vhdx: (EFI System Partition) 110,592 KB

However, this morning I discovered some new information which I think might be helpful. My initial backup drive was a Seagate 2TB Expansion Drive in use for over a year, but never really tested except for checking the backup files were readable in File Manager, but not the image files. A couple of weeks ago I dropped this drive and Windows Backup would no longer accept it, and it didn't pass the Long Generic test by SeaTools for Windows, although chkdsk /scan reported no problems with the files or file structure, so I hope they might be recoverable. I replaced the drive with a Seagate 2 TB Backup Plus Slim which I first checked with chkdsk and Seatools for Windows. The above file sizes come from the new drive.

This morning I tried to attach a VHD using the .vdhx file from the old drive, and it worked!

While this might point to a fault in the new drive, I wonder if it matters that the old drive is 4096 bits/sector and the new drive 512. I think I recall reading somewhere that W7 would automatically change from .vhd files to .vhdx if the drive were 4096. Could there be some confusion in my machine due to this change affecting the Attach process?

I hope this is not a red herring.

Hi Brink
Firstly, apologies that my last post was ambiguous. It was the old drive I had dropped that I was able to mount from and its replacement that I'm having trouble with.

I did run chkdsk on both drives again, including the /f option on the new drive. Even though the dropped (old) drive is unaccepted by Windows Backup its existing files appear to be OK. So I succeeded in copying an old backup .vhdx file from the old drive to a new folder on the new drive. I could successfully mount the file from the old drive (to VHD N:), but not its copy from the new drive (to VHD M:); when trying to view M: from File Manager, I was still getting zero contents. It was while staring perplexedly at the Disk Management screen that I realised what was wrong, and I am very red-faced about it.

In previous posts I mentioned that after initially assigning the drive letter M, future attempted attachments using the same file were automatically attached as M. I had just been accepting that, I guess without bothering to look carefully at the screen. It turned out that M had been assigned to the wrong VHD partition - the one at the right-hand side of the graphical display - and I had not picked it up. After correcting that everything works fine and I no longer have a problem. I also discovered that I can remove that ongoing association with the drive letter if, before detaching, I right click the (correct) VHD partition, choose the Change Drive Letter option and click Remove. I still think it would be helpful if you added a bit about this in this tutorial.

So I do apologise for taking up your time; the upside of the exercise for me has been that I have learnt a lot and am now a member of 10 Forums.

Regards and best wishes.

I just made a simple .bat in syst folder for fast mount but simpler than the exemple.

Code:

"c:\...\my.vhdx"
Pause

It doesn't work without pause