Windows 7 Data upgrade from Vista

[cfourkays]

Just before the system crashed, a full backup was made using the Vista Backup and Restore feature.
The PC is now dead.
The owner is buying a new laptop with W-7.
Can the backup that was saved on a portable drive, 12 Gb's worth, be restored to a new 7 machine?

Pete

 

[Highwayman]

would be unlikely since the backups record a copy of the hardware it was installed on, typically it locks to it. As for data recovery, umm not sure maybe but not aware of suitable apps to read it to recover particular files, as the default action would be to revert the entire OS to the time of the backup.

 

[Trouble]

cfourkays;
Hello and welcome to the forums.
The Highwayman is correct, it's not likely that you would be successful in restoring a vista backup to a Windows 7 machine and even if you managed to somehow get to it from the system repair options (when booting from install media) it would definitely
1. wipe the 7 machine and
2. most likely fail to boot due to extremely disparate hardware.
But;
I believe the Vista "Full PC Backup" used the same .VHD format as does Windows 7, so it is possible if you are looking to retrieve personal data, files and folders, music, pictures, docs, email, etc., you may be able to use the disk management utility from within Windows 7 to mount/attach the .VHD file that was created with VIsta Backup, and explore/browse the contents and copy and paste to a folder of your choice on the Windows 7 machine.
Mount, attach and create VHD files in Windows Vista and Windows 7 - 4sysops
failing that there is another option (far more elaborate, but still an option) that suggests loading the .VHD file as the second hard drive in a Virtual Machine Environment
Link Removed
Hope this helps and again thanks for joining our community.
Regards.
Randy

 

[cfourkays]

Thanks folks for the quick reply.

This is all I'm concerned with. "retrieve personal data, files and folders, music, pictures, docs, email, etc."

I can read about 74 zipped files on my own W-7 machine, which when drilling down, can get to the individual files.
Obviously not the perfect solution.
I'm going to try mounting the VHD on a W-7 Pro PC.