System Image Recovery (help!)

[polarablues]

Hey guys,

So I'm trying to recover a system image on a laptop. The image was saved to a drive shared on my desktop. This is 7 ultimate btw. Now, I use a system recovery disk, it searches on the computer for images, doesn't find any. I go to "advanced" then "search on network" and it asks me for the network path. I type in \\server\drive\folder etc. then it asks me for credentials. I put in my credentials and then it says the network path cannot be found...

Any ideas? Thanks.

[glc]

Pull the drive out of your desktop and connect it to the laptop with a USB adapter.

[polarablues]

I'll try it, but I had already copied the image to my external drive, which was not recognized by the computer I'm trying to fix. I can take the drive out and put it in this case, though.

[polarablues]

Ok, so I pulled the HDD out of the desktop and put it in the external enclosure. Still wouldn't recognize the image. As it turns out, if you save your image into a folder (which windows lets you do, and it's really stupid) you cannot recover from it. OR if you copy the image, you cannot recover from it. HOWEVER, I created a NEW backup (since I did have access to windows), went in and destroyed the new image files, and copied the new files in there. This worked. However, it seems some things went back to the way they were, and some didn't. For instance, my custom theme is still screwed up, and outlook still will not work. I'm going to have to completely redo both of those things. Other than that, all my files and libraries are back where I like them.

Anyway, it's just odd what reverted and what didn't. I thought by recovering the image it would come up exactly as the computer was two weeks ago.

moral of the story: DO NOT save your windows image to a network drive. ALWAYS save it to another internal drive, or external drive, to the root of the drive. If you're having more than one folder, you can temporarily rename the "windowsimagebackup" folder, but in order to use it you'll have to change it back. NEVER EVER mess with the order of things inside the folders, or you're screwed.

We should make a sticky, or a guide for this or something. It's honestly not as easy as it should be.