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I recently had Windows implode on me from an update gone wrong. I was able to copy all my files both as a full copy and paste onto another drive, as well as a clonezilla image. After doing a clean install of Windows though I have no clue how to restore from those files. I could just copy and paste them back onto the drive, but I am pretty sure that would leave me with a mess of improperly installed programs and/or whatever corruption caused my problems in the first place.

I tried doing a search for answers on this topic but all I could find are references to file recover programs or how to use the official Windows backup program.

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    Your personal files is what makes sense to backup. If you did it then great. Programs should be installed, not recovered from a useless image.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Aug 8, 2021 at 3:23

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After doing a clean install of Windows though I have no clue how to restore from those files.

Performing the clean install of Windows was the harder part of the job. Restoring your files is simply a matter of copying the files back to where they came from originally.

I was able to copy all my files both as a full copy and paste onto another drive, as well as a clonezilla image.

A simple copy and paste on to a separate backup hard drive is the backup method I use.

To restore your files, just copy your Documents folder contents on your backup drive to your Windows Documents folder, copy the contents of your Music folder in your backup drive to your Windows Music folder and so on.

I am pretty sure that would leave me with a mess of improperly installed programs and/or whatever corruption caused my problems in the first place.

The backups that mean anything are of the files you created. Files created through installation should be recreated through their relevant install programs.

Games, apps and programs need proper installation for them to work properly. Just put the install disk in and run it, or if the setup files were downloaded, re-download them and run them.

For example, if you are talking about Adobe Acrobat Reader for reading PDF files, go to https://www.adobe.com/download and you can download and install it free from there.

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The Facts

Backup images (depending on the software taking the backup) are typically designed to restore the entire system to the exact state it was when the backup was taken. In this method, you do not reinstall the OS and then recover files; you just restore the entire system using the appropriate tools associated with the backup solution.

My Recommendation

You have already reinstalled the OS so you need to change your plan of action or start from scratch. I advise you just recover your personal files (documents, images, videos, etc) to the appropriate location and reinstall all applications from their respective sources. If you don't want to take this approach, just perform a full restore from the image you have taken.

If you need specific information for how to restore from the CloneZilla image you took, see the following link:

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image

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  • Seeing that Windows was broken before the image was taken, restoring without the clean install would just give an the same problems. I hadn’t run Windows for years prior to the crash so I don’t have any pre-backup/recover images, this happened just when I was starting to get the system back up and running.
    – XRF
    Commented Aug 8, 2021 at 20:41

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