Mounting backup file created by Windows 2008 Server

Mounting backup file created by Windows 2008 Server (Wbadmin)

Windows Server 2008 backup has now improved we no longer backup to BKF file any more, we now backup to VHD file. This VHD file can now be mounted in virtual server as an additional disk to view the content of the back or we could Use Disk mount Utility to view the content. Today what we are going to talk about is how we can use an inbuilt windows 2008 utility to mount the VHD file created to view it content no more virtual server or disk mount utility. This inbuilt utility is known as NTDSUTIL

To begin we need to run command prompt with elevated permissions then let move to the root of the System drive run NTDSUTIL from NTDSUTIL invoke Snapshot then list all the backup snapshots that we have taken as shown in the picture below

Select the backup content you want to mount

Let say we want to mount the 1^st one we can mount either by the backup snapshot number or by the Guid as shown in the pictures bellow

Once it is mounted you should get the following message as show in the picture above then open up windows explorer and you should see shortcut to the backup that you mounted by clicking on that shortcut you can view we copy the contents like files and folders as shown in the picture bellow

To mount another backup we need to dismount the existing snapshot as shown in the picture below

This way you can copy view replace backup taken from windows server 2008 WBADMIN snap-in without using any other extra utility