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I recently installed Linux Mint on my computer, dual booting with Windows 7. However, in the process I managed to corrupt my hard drive (trying to convert a "dynamic" Windows disk back to a "basic" one). My immediate plan was to do a fresh reinstall Windows 7. However now I think I would be happy having just Linux. There is one issue:

I backed up my data on to an external hard drive using Windows 7's Backup and Restore tool. I had troubles making a system image (which would be really handy right now!), so it is just basically my entire C/users/myname directory. When I boot Linux and insert the drive, I am able to read the data easily. However, it is in some bizarre storage format. Each backup is comprised of hundreds of zip files called "Backup files n.zip" (n a number), and contains another folder called "Catalogs" full of hundreds of .wbcat and .wbverify files. Within each zip file my original file structure is preserved, but it would be a mess to combine them all properly.

I am very unfamiliar with how backups work. Is there a Linux tool that can properly unpack this backup or do I need to re-install Windows 7?

More detail on the current situation:

  • In my backup drive I have the following directories: MYNAME-HP, $RECYCLEBIN, System Volume Information. There is also a binary file MediaID.bin.
  • MYNAME-HP contains a directory for each data backup I have from different times. I am only interested in the latest one. There is also the files Desktop.ini and MediaID.bin
  • Within the latest backup directory, there are two directories: one contains the actual backup files, and the other is called "Catalogs". Catalogs contains one file: GlobalCatalog.wbcat.
  • The main backup folder contains 748 usual .zip archives, along with another "Catalogs" folder. This Catalogs includes two files for every zip, one is .wbcat and the other is .wbverify.
  • Each zip file contains a random assortment of my files, with the file structure preserved. That is, when I extract the zip, every file resides in the appropriate folder, always beginning with a folder that was my C/users directory. But if I extract multiple zips, I will have many many copies of the same directories.

What I need is either 1) a program that can deal with this automatically. 2) A method of mass-extracting all of the data, and then merging the directories in a logical fashion.

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  • I'm pretty sure that if you want to restore a windows backup, you have to have the Windows backup tool, but since you mention that you can see they appear to be somewhat normal zip files that contain somewhat normal files, if you provided a more detailed description of what they contain there may be hope.
    – psusi
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 1:20
  • I will add more detail momentarily, but to be clear, they are completely normal zip files with completely normal files within. I can easily extract them and read my data. It is just an organizational nightmare.
    – mb7744
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 3:54
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    Never mind, I realized my problem is trivial. Ugh. I just had to check "preserve file structure" while extracting each zip.
    – mb7744
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 4:08
  • Welcome to Super User. You can freely edit your own posts but for your protection, this must be done under the original user account. It looks like you have created a second account, which will also interfere with your ability to comment within your thread and to accept an answer. See Merge my accounts to get your accounts merged, which will solve the problem.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 4:53
  • @mb7744 You should add an answer to this question
    – endolith
    Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 15:04

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