WINDOWS Backup & Restore utility not recognizing my backup file

The following solution was obtained from:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/backup-and-restore-cannot-find-any-back-up-sets/f09e511e-b764-434c-9312-038c679beeb4

"I have resolved the issue. It appears that for a new installation (reinstall of OS), it is necessary to set up backup to the same location the original backup is stored. After backing up the new installation to the same location as the older backups, the older backups are available to be applied."

I acted upon this with no avail.  However,  when I removed the older backup sets the new backup set became visible within the dialog box to select which backup to restore.  When I then move the old backup sets to the mainPC folder again the new backup set disappears.

I suspect there is some kind of permission conflict that needs to be resolved to see all of the backups?

Anyone have intimate knowledge on this aspect of the restoration process?

Hi Jeff,

I appreciate the efforts which you have put to try to resolve the issue. Please write to us with the following detail.

Hi Jeff,

I appreciate the efforts which you have put to try to resolve the issue. Please write to us with the following detail.

How many old and new backup sets are there?

Keep one old backup set and one new, see if it gets detected in the WINDOWS Backup & Restore utility. Let us know the status of the issue. We will assist you.

I simplified it & simply now working with a new one & an old one.  The new one is a small backup of an individual subdirectory within My DOCS directory to reduce the time of iteration.  The large backup set is from last March.  That backup set resides on a hard drive on another computer which I then transferred to a USB external drive to interface with the computer where I would do the restoration on.

I tried to transfer the new backup set to the other computer & then put it on the external drive & then restore it to the primary target computer to see if I could repeat the problem & save on iteration time to diagnose the problem, but I was not able to replicate the situation.

What I can replicate is that if I move the backup set folders of the old backup into the myPC backup folder the new backup is not detected by the BKUP & RESTORE utility.  When I remove the old backup folders the new backup set can be detected.  So the media.bin file I guess is OK.  My suspicion is permissions may be blocking the utility, but that is PURE speculation.

By the way I did do an extraction of the files via 7-ZIP software so I know the files are present in the old backup set.  Unfortunately, using 7-ZIP cannot reconstruct files larger than 200Mb so I have a number of fragmented files that need to be combined.

I would like to figure out this problem so I do not lose any impending backups.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I appreciate the efforts which you have put to try to resolve the issue. Please write to us with the following detail.

How many old and new backup sets are there?

Keep one old backup set and one new, see if it gets detected in the WINDOWS Backup & Restore utility. Let us know the status of the issue. We will assist you.

I conducted further experiments & have finally been able to replicate the behavior.  I created 2 backup files on 2 separate partitions.  Then on 1 of the backups I deleted the mediaID.bin file.  I then transferred both backups to another computer via REMOTE connection.  On the 2nd computer I copied the 2 different backups to an external hard drive on 2 separate partitions.  I then connected the external drive to the 1st computer & started up the RESTORE procedure.  The utility recognized 3 out of the 4 backup sets.  The 1 backup set it did not recognize was the 1 on the external drive which has the mediaID.bin file.  The other backup on the external drive is the replica of the backup on the 1st computer from which the mediaID.bin file was deleted.

So now I surmise that the mediaID.bin file for the 1 case has been rendered obsolete through this process.  How can I rectify this?  Simply deleting the mediaID.bin  file did not result in detection of this 4th backup set.  The MARCH, 2013 backup set still has its mediaID.bin file & deleting it now will not resolve the situation.

I resolved the problem.  I rebuilt the mediaID per the procedure outlined by:

http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/little-known-error-for-windows-7-backup-and-restore

The following link describes a procedure which does the same thing (I think), but the procedure is far more tedious:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/unable-to-restore-the-backup-files-error-delete/d0f5d1dd-2fd6-4478-9e74-78b1dc5b7aaa

I posted a reply to that link asking if the same result is obtained by both procedures.  Maybe future users will find the simpler procedure as effective & certainly less tedious.