System image on different hardware possible?

[_dawn_chorus_]

I just rebuilt my rig and found that in the latest edition of the DAW I use a folder crucial to projects working was moved and renamed, so I over looked it while backing up.
I have a system image from right before I wiped it, thing is, I sold the CPU.. and no longer have one for that socket. I do have an older desktop franken-build and an empty HDD...

So is it possible to load the system image onto a computer with different hardware? If only briefly to copy that folder? I dont't need stability, just enough time to Indiana Jones that folder out of there.

 

[cryoburner]

How is the image stored? A VHD file? ISO? I believe you should be able to access the files in that archive without actually writing them to a drive first, either by mounting it as a virtual drive if you have Windows 10 Pro, or by opening it with an archive tool like 7-zip.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

How is the image stored? A VHD file? ISO? I believe you should be able to access the files in that archive without actually writing them to a drive first, either by mounting it as a virtual drive if you have Windows 10 Pro, or by opening it with an archive tool like 7-zip.

It just says its a Hard Disk Image File under file type when I click into the folders. I think I have F**k't myself though anyway. The most recent Image style backup was a week before a slew of recordings. I manually backed up everything else without knowing it had changed the folders in the update.
Still curious if it may work to open just for future reference.

 

[USAFRet]

So is it possible to load the system image onto a computer with different hardware? If only briefly to copy that folder? I dont't need stability, just enough time to Indiana Jones that folder out of there.

Depends on what this "system image" is.
I could take a VHD from VirtualBox or VMWare, and move it to a different system, because the VirtualBox subsystem IS the 'PC'.

If it is a regular Windows System image, this is unlikely to work.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

Depends on what this "system image" is.
I could take a VHD from VirtualBox or VMWare, and move it to a different system, because the VirtualBox subsystem IS the 'PC'.

If it is a regular Windows System image, this is unlikely to work.

I have had that picture of yours ("life""yourdata") running through my mind all morning...

It is unfortunately just the Windows image. I have been doing my image backups from the Win7 Backup and restore options window within Win10.

What is a more ideal way to do an image? In case I need to access one from different hardware down the line.

 

[USAFRet]

Depends on what this "system image" is.
I could take a VHD from VirtualBox or VMWare, and move it to a different system, because the VirtualBox subsystem IS the 'PC'.

If it is a regular Windows System image, this is unlikely to work.

I have had that picture of yours ("life""yourdata") running through my mind all morning...

It is unfortunately just the Windows image. I have been doing my image backups from the Win7 Backup and restore options window within Win10.

What is a more ideal way to do an image? In case I need to access one from different hardware down the line.

Yeah, "life" is constantly trying to kill your data.

The best way I've found is to have the OS and applications on one physical drive, and your data, incl plugins and whatnot, on other drives.
Backed up individually.
OS and applications can always be rebuilt/reinstalled. Even if just temporarily, on different hardware.
If your data is intertwined with the OS, that makes things much more difficult.

Each of the physical drives in my system gets a backup (Full or Incremental or Differential) every night.
I could recover one of the secondary data drives to any other hardware, as needed.

Some of the imaging tools (ex. Macrium Reflect) even give you the functionality to mount an Image as its own drive letter, without actually recovering the whole thing.
I can mount an Image of my F drive (photo work) from last Tuesday, and extract a single jpg from that.

 

[cryoburner]

You might try following what they describe here to see if you can access individual files in that image, assuming it's stored in one of these formats...

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/extract-specific-files-windows-7-8-system-image-backup

That obviously wouldn't work for any data stored to the drive after the image was made though. One possibility for those files, if they're not in the archive, might be to try using a file recovery utility, in case they haven't been overwritten with other data on the drive. If the drive they were on is mostly empty, and had only been quick-formatted, there's a chance that they could still be recoverable by performing a deep scan in such a utility. Some example of free data recovery software can be found here...

https://fossbytes.com/top-best-free-data-recovery-software-2016/

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

Depends on what this "system image" is.
I could take a VHD from VirtualBox or VMWare, and move it to a different system, because the VirtualBox subsystem IS the 'PC'.

If it is a regular Windows System image, this is unlikely to work.

I have had that picture of yours ("life""yourdata") running through my mind all morning...

It is unfortunately just the Windows image. I have been doing my image backups from the Win7 Backup and restore options window within Win10.

What is a more ideal way to do an image? In case I need to access one from different hardware down the line.

Yeah, "life" is constantly trying to kill your data.

The best way I've found is to have the OS and applications on one physical drive, and your data, incl plugins and whatnot, on other drives.
Backed up individually.
OS and applications can always be rebuilt/reinstalled. Even if just temporarily, on different hardware.
If your data is intertwined with the OS, that makes things much more difficult.

Each of the physical drives in my system gets a backup (Full or Incremental or Differential) every night.
I could recover one of the secondary data drives to any other hardware, as needed.

Some of the imaging tools (ex. Macrium Reflect) even give you the functionality to mount an Image as its own drive letter, without actually recovering the whole thing.
I can mount an Image of my F drive (photo work) from last Tuesday, and extract a single jpg from that.

Geez just when I get all set up again and think I know what I am doing..heh. A couple months ago I moved all of my OS, Applications, and Sample libraries to the 1tb NVME, and it is noticeably faster at retrieving all samples when I open a project. Is there a way to set up automated backups for just the specific folders I need in case of catastrophe? I'd rather not move the samples/recordings back to a sata drive if I can avoid it.
and I'll have to check out the Macrium Reflect, because that sounds pretty slick.

 

[USAFRet]

Geez just when I get all set up again and think I know what I am doing..heh. A couple months ago I moved all of my OS, Applications, and Sample libraries to the 1tb NVME, and it is noticeably faster at retrieving all samples when I open a project. Is there a way to set up automated backups for just the specific folders I need in case of catastrophe? I'd rather not move the samples/recordings back to a sata drive if I can avoid it.
and I'll have to check out the Macrium Reflect, because that sounds pretty slick.

Personally, I prefer to back up the entire drive. In case of disaster, recover to whatever.
You can back up individual folders, but you need to send your backups to some other drive anyway.