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I created a backup using the Windows "Backup and Restore" in Windows 7. The harddrive was encrypted using DiskCryptor.

The windows image consists of 2 vhd files where one of them is the main partition. When I would like to attach the VHD I get

Virtual Disk Manager
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

I tried attaching using diskpart and VDISK ATTACH and using the Disk Management snap in. I also tried attaching it to a virtual machine in VirtualBox. I also tried using the "DiskInternals Reader" Total Commander plugin. It loads but the partitions are empty.

As far as I remember I already mounted VHD from Windows Backup successfully long time ago but I am not sure. I am also not sure I used full disk encryption (FDE) at that point and if yes, it might have been TrueCrypt rather than DiskCryptor.

I am not sure if it has anything to do with encryption anyway: While most of the content looks random, I could glimpse part of a PDF file within the VHD file. The last part of the file has:

A disk read error occurred 
BOOTMGR is missing 
BOOTMGR is compressed 
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

which also indicates that the VHD file is not encrypted.

Although it seems obvious I don't want to believe that both VHD files are indeed corrupt: I created the backup just yesterday, no error or warning was ever issued and I can view the VHD files without any problems in a HEX editor.

One way to find out would be to recover the backup. But I want to avoid this since the PC has already been reinstalled. I just want to extract a couple of files. Even less: I just need the directory structure of certain directories (i.e. the names, not their content).

My suspicion (and hope) is that Windows Backup does not create real VHD files or the format is different.

What is the actual format Windows Backup creates? Does it matter at all if there was FDE enabled (such as DiskCryptor, TrueCrypt)? How to access files from the backup?

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  • Can you go through your question, and verify all the information, hard to help with "maybe" statements.
    – Ramhound
    Jun 17, 2015 at 16:22
  • Your not going to boot to these VHD that were created, because they have no boot sector, they are just a backup of your files.
    – Ramhound
    Jun 17, 2015 at 16:30
  • I think the text was a bit confusing. I edited it and hope it is more clear now. Also I do not want to boot the VHD I just would like to extract some content.
    – divB
    Jun 17, 2015 at 17:12

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