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Dell Recovery Disks: Getting my files back from the Emergency folder
Greetings, fellow Dell users.
When something hosed my Boot partition I booted my desktop (XPS-7100, 64-bit, Win-7 Home Premium) with the Dell recovery Disks I burned some weeks earlier. (Good timing, ain't it? :emotion-11: ). It did some things I did not expect, like reinitializing my C partition after first saving about 12 GB of files to an Emergency folder on another drive. It did NOT fix the boot partition; that seems to have been a serendipitious accident caused by an alternate OS I have on the same drive.
Now, when I booted Windows earlier today, it started to follow the sequence of a first-time boot, as it did when I bought the machine. I stopped it cold - I wasn't prepared for the commitment without a clear path to restoring those 12 GB of files.
The backup is stored as a set of files in folder Emergency on my J: drive (an external, USB-attached MyBook). In my case, the first file is named Backup_11-30-2010_10-41-31 AM.1.exe; all the others are similarly named, with a date and time stamp but for the extension:
Backup_11-30-2010_10-41-31 AM.2.dsb
Backup_11-30-2010_10-41-31 AM.3.dsb
...
Backup_11-30-2010_10-41-31 AM.37.dsb
Can someone tell me where I go from here? :emotion-7: I plan to boot Windows again and go through the initialization sequence as I did on day-1. Then I want to start restoring from all those backup files.
My hope: All I need to do is run that first .exe file and it will pull all the rest in.
- Will the exe know that the remaining .dsb files are on the J drive?
- Will the mybook will still be drive J: when I am done with the initializations.
- If the addressing gets mixed up, will I be able to tell it where the backup data resides?
- Will I still need to reinstall McAfee and all the other software aside from the OS? Or was all that preserved when I used the recovery disks?
So many questions! As a veteran of so many things gone wrong, even I can't think of all the eventualities! :emotion-37:
Anyone have answers to all that?
Thanks oh so much!!
-- Rasputin Paskudniak
doublepedro
2 Posts
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December 13th, 2010 19:00
Hi,
I do not have an answer but am in a similar situation. FWIW, I created an "emergency" backup of all my files (onto a separate USB drive) prior to restoring Vista via my recovery disks. However, I have been unable to recover anything of use from the emergency backup folder. So, although I have been able to get my computer booting and back to where it was when purchased, I seem to out of luck as far as recovering any of my data files. I will hang onto my emergency backup for a while and monitor this thread in case someone posts a solution.
Keeping my fingers crossed!
jakesalomon
1 Message
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December 14th, 2010 18:00
PedroPedro :emotion-1:
A good start is by running the first of the backup files. It is the only .exe file in the bunch.
Problem: It restored all my user files to their original locations, owned by ADMINISTRATORS and marked "Read-Only". When I recreated my child's account (call him Mikey) it ignored C:\Users\Mikey and instead created C:\Users\Mikey.mymachine as his virgin home folder.
In the Windows-7 forum (sevenforums.com) Navigate to this thread that discusses how to change a user's home folder. There are many pages of comments; A similar situation to yours and a very intuitive response thereto are on page 6 or 7 of that thread.
Good luck!
-- JS
doublepedro
2 Posts
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December 15th, 2010 07:00
JS,
Thanks for the reply.
I did run the first of the backup files (several times now) and the restore proceeds (asks me where I want to put the files, what to do with duplicates, etc.). I have restored it to my computer as well as to a separate folder on the desktop. The results seem to be the same in either case. Namely, the restored data from the backup looks lilike a default-ish directory structure; e.g. the only users listed are admnistrator, default and public and I can't find any files, photos, etc. that are not samples that came with windows.
FWIW, I haven't purchased the "upgrade" to the Dell Data Safe utility (and I really don't want to) but am wondering if that could be the difference/issue (did you?). Prior to reinstalling the OS (and wiping all of my data from the hard rive) I performed the emergency backup of all files and folders as instructed after booting the computer from my recovery disks. I would be very upset if Dell would require an additional purchase (upgrade) in order to restore the emergency backup correctly (I think that would be called "extortion" in some circles:-)).
Many thanks if you can point out anything that I may be missing, otherwise, thanks again for your reply.
tkddevin
1 Message
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December 15th, 2010 19:00
I have a similar problem. I reset my computer to factory settings, and created the emergency backup file. Now my computer is running fine but i don't know how to recover those files. When i restarted the computer there was a folder marked emergency file backup on my desktop. In it there is a list of 32 files. I ran the first one and it sounds like the one Pedro was talking about, ( where it asks where to put the files and if they should replace similar ones). I didn't notice a difference after i ran it, but what do I know.
When i tried the other files it says i need to find a program to run them, and whenever that happens to me i become completely lost.
I didn't have many files on my computer prior to the reset, so all i really need to recover is my itunes library and a few documents on microsoft word. Any help that can be given would be greatly appreciated.
By the way i'm a complete noob when it comes to these types of things.
tgsmith
2.9K Posts
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December 15th, 2010 22:00
Rasputin,
Assuming that you used the Windows 7 Backup and Restore program to create your system image, see this detailed explanation of how you restore your system image: http://www.shivaranjan.com/2009/05/21/windows-7-how-to-restore-windows-7-partition-or-hard-disk-partitions-from-a-system-image/
Note that when you restore a system image, it needs to reformat the hard drive to properly restore the system to the point when the image was made. The above link gives a detailed description of each method of restoring your image. You will probably want to use Method 3.
Hope this info helps.
Tony
candiceahlstran
2 Posts
0
May 6th, 2011 19:00
I am having the same problem and unable to find a solution.