When you don’t want the entire image.
In a prior article, we created an image backup of your PC using the free version of EaseUS Todo.
Image backups are one of the most important types of backups because they back up absolutely everything. Should you need to replace a failed hard drive, for example, an image backup will restore everything and let you continue as if nothing had happened.
But what if you don’t need everything? What if you just need a single file you know is somewhere in that image backup?
No problem.
Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free!
Restoring files
- Locate the backup image “.pdb” file.
- Double-click on it.
- Navigate to the file or files you want within the image.
- Copy the files to your hard disk.
Locate the image
Naturally, you’ll need the file or files containing your image backup.
If it’s a full backup, then only the single “.pbd” file is necessary. If it’s in an incremental backup, you’ll need the full image backup that it was based on plus the intervening incremental backups.
The files will be wherever you instructed EaseUS to place them when you created your image backup. Typically, that’s on your external backup drive, but it could be almost anywhere with sufficient storage space.
Navigate to that location in Windows File Explorer.
In the example above, the image file is located in:
- D: – my external backup drive. When I created my backup, I told EaseUS Todo to put the image files on this drive.
- My Backups – the folder on that drive where I told EaseUS Todo to put the image files.
- Disk 0 – the name of the folder EaseUS Todo created to represent the disk drive it was backing up.
The name of the image file itself — “Disk 0_20231009_Full_v1.pbd” — includes the disk name, the date of the backup, the type of the backup (Full), and the first version of a backup on that date.
If you have multiple backup files or incremental backups, locate the most recent file to access the most recently backed-up files. (If you need to get a file from “a week ago”, for example, locate the image file that corresponds to the backup taken immediately after that time.)
Double-click on that file. EaseUS Todo1 will mount the file, making its contents visible in Windows File Explorer.
Navigating the image
Windows File Explorer opens to the top-level contents contained in the image file.
In the example above, the image file contains backups of the C: drive as well as three additional partitions that were present on the disk.
Double-click on the drive containing the file(s) you want to restore. In our example, that’s the original “C:” drive.
What you’ll see is the contents of the root of the C: drive as it was when the backup was taken. You can now navigate through that backup image just as you would with any other drive in Windows File Explorer.
Restoring your file
From the backup image in Windows File Explorer, navigate to the Documents directory within C:. In our example, that’s:
- C:
- users
- askleo – (would be replaced with your own login name)
- Documents
Remember, this isn’t your “real” C: drive; this is all part of the backup image stored on your external hard drive. The full path is, in reality:
D:\My Backups\Disk 0\Disk 0_20231009_Full_v1.pbd
And then within that image file:
C:\Users\askleo\Documents
To restore a file — such as the “some text.txt” file in the example above — simply copy it to any folder on your actual hard drive — the “real” C: — using any technique you’re comfortable with: drag and drop, copy/paste, or something else.
That’s all there is to it.
You can repeat this process for as many different files or folders as you want to restore from your backup image.
Do this
This is why we take full image backups. We don’t have to figure out what we need to back up because we back up everything. Then, if and when we need to restore something, it’s a simple matter to mount the backup image, locate what we need, and copy it back to our hard disk.
For more tips on backing up, subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.
Podcast audio
Related Video
Footnotes & References
1: This all assumes you’re working on the same machine you were backing up and thus have EaseUS Todo installed. You will need it installed in order for this process to work. You can restore files from an image taken of any machine, but Todo must be installed on the current machine.
Articles in this series:
Leo, just saw this Backup Newsletter… and as I have been running EaseUs TO DO Backup for several years, I’m going to peruse your article in detail. It’s been a satisfactory program for me… and once when something messed up my system so I couldn’t get it to do start… I used the restore from a separate usb drive I use for backups.. and it took a while, and while some programs that put a code in a particular sector, or wherever, needed me to put in the install code again… everything restored properly. The program seems to just keep on chugging along… and does what it’s supposed to do.
Many thanks for the review and I know I’ll enjoy pouring over it.
Best, Nat
If you’re pouring something over it, not poring, you’re going to need that backup.
Restoring a File From EaseUS
Hi Leo,
When you find the file you want to recover in your EaseUS image, right-click on it and a menu will open and provide a list of options, such as “restore to original location.”
Lloyd,
? Does the list of options allow one to restore a full-backup image to a DIFFERENT hard drive [options when the saved image file is right clicked] ?
Most apps don’t seem to give a definitive answer, simply assume the full-backup image will overwrite the original].
? Assuming not, and that I boot from a EaseUs recovery image/boot cd: Could I fool the restore file into actually restoring to a different drive by temporarily changing the drive signature of the recipient drive before restore; i.e. give the recipient drive the signature that the donor drive did have whilst it created the full-image backup file ?
Not need to fool EaseUS Todo. A backup can be restored to a replacement hard drive.
Not via the right click option, but yes, you can restore images to other drives, and you can restore individual files to wherever you like.
Under the 2nd paragraph in the section “Locate the image” it says if it’s in an incremental backup you will need the full image backup that it was based on plus all the intervening incremental backups as well. The first nightly incremental image in the new month is a “full” image. Using Ease us todo TBImage Explorer I am able to open individual files in this image as well as in the next 3 nightly Backups. When I get to the 4th nightly Backup this procedure no longer works. What am I doing wrong? I have windows 10 with the latest update.
The procedure using Windows File Explorer does not work at all!
Any help in resolving thsi would be greatly appreciated.
It sounds like the 4th image might be damaged. If that’s the case, I’d move all the backups after number 3 to another folder or another drive (just in case there is recoverable information) and take an incremental backup which would be the new 4th backup. Hopefully, the backups should work after that.
I have tried that twice before and on both occasions it worked for a couple of times and then it no longer worked!
Easeustodi was on a loop trying to uninstall old programme before updating. Never happened before.
Why not do a similar article for Macrium Reflect? I use this because you endorsed it. I have been able to do a complete restore of an image but can’t find the individual file I would want and don’t want to do a complete restore and then have other files lost since the backup may be one week old.
I’ve got an entire course on Macrium Reflect: Saved! Backing Up with Macrium Reflect 8 – Online Course