Browse and Restore Files

Backup Image for Windows 8 Free

I successfully created a backup image (I think) of my Hard drive (all partitions) across 13 DVDs. The machine booted and backed up to the 13 disks and on the last one said it was complete.. It did not reboot on its own successfully.
I have about 9 files on each DVD, an info.txt, and a disk.pbf file.

With a backup like this, is it possible to browse and restore a single file from
the windows GUI? I've tried selecting the first .pbf file on the first DVD and the disk.pdf off the last DVD. Nothing seems to give me an image to browse. I mostly get a blank selection when it asks for an image.

I've read the documentation but its seems not written for a backup split across DVDs. I seem to be missing something fundamental about restores.

Thanks.

 

I have no idea about doing a file restore from DVDs but I'm going to give a general opinion which is worth whatever you want it to be which includes worthless to you. Some of what I'm going to say is based on another imaging program - not Paragon but there likely are similarities.

My opinion is that working from DVDs especially once you get past 2 or 3 is a frustrating waste of time even if it does work. It is likely the files are not arranged in a the nice order they appear when you look at them in Explorer. Imaging programs tend to grab sequential sectors and there is a good chance your files don't match that. This can cause a lot of DVD swapping when trying to restore individual files in order to get all the sectors. The joke was that the DVD reader drawer would wear out before the file(s) were restored.

IMO, the best way to do images or large size backup for that matter is to use another HD, external or internal. If you want the diversity of media for safety which is a reasonable idea, then copy the 4GB splits off onto DVDs using a burning program like Nero and verify the burn with the burning program's verify function.

For restoring, copy the DVDs onto a HD and then take it from there. It will likely save a lot of time and anguish.

 

Thanks ... I agree putting all the images from the DVDs into a directory may
be best. I don't have a larger terabyte drive to backup to but I do have an
extra internal hard drive that a backup will fit on...I'll try working with that.

The premise here was I wanted a hard drive image on DVD so I have some sort
of backup.. I've worked with tape backups in the past
and catalogs of what was on the tapes were easy to work with. Your backup could be on 10 tapes but the restore would tell you which one to load...had no idea split files on disks would be more difficult.

 

I always do my images to a second internal HD because it is fast and it is easy - I don't have to find anything. Actually, the backup is fairly safe unless the computer gets wiped out by lightning. I only copy selected images to an external HD for off-line storage. What I likely may be doing different than you, is that I don't image any data files only the OS and applications which is all that is on my C drive. Important data files are elsewhere and backed up with a different program. This means that picking out a file from an image is virtually never done, if I want something back, I restore the whole image.

Your tape system (I used to have Travan tape drive) used the HD filesystem to locate the data files and wrote them sequentially on the tape. An image program gets down more into the guts are only uses the filesystem for few things such as finding the in-use sectors. This is why an image program can run comparatively fast compared to a file backup system but it means it optimizing sector reads not organizing by files.

When you are restoring from a HD the speed makes all the hopping around to different slices of the archive invisible but if it means loading DVD 3 then DVD 4 then DVD 3 again, it becomes pretty painful. Like I said this was based on a different program, not Paragon. There is also the issue of whether or not the Backup Image for Windows 8 supports what you are trying to do. You could raise a support ticket with Paragon and ask the question.