Restoring Data From A Pc Back Up

[joko]

I have found some old back up files on some ext drives - id like to see whats in the back ups
and cant just restore because it will delete the current system etc - right?

so how can i open a back up?

is there any software that opens them?

or is tthere a way to restore only my personal files, pics etc, but not windows or settings?

thanks :)

[Buenchico]

It's not clear what you mean by 'back up files'. Are they simply copies of original files or have those files been compressed into one or more composite files? (There are lots of different ways of creating backups).

What do you actually see you access one of the external drives? In particular, what file extension(s) are you presented with?

[joko]

thanks

there are about 300 swm files

do you know if they are just system image files, or also personal files?

i know i have various other back up on these drives - the ones you do, if you wanted to restore to factory settings and then put it all back on it again - so i assume they incluse windows files, and personal files?

[Buenchico]

Those files were probably created by software from HP. The way to extract data from them is shown here:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Recover-files-swm/m-p/7005050#M554210
and makes use of 7-Zip, which you can download from here:
https://www.7-zip.org/

7-Zip is 100% safe. (It's one of the programs which I load straight away onto any new PC). Note that there are different downloads for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems though. If you're not sure which OS you've got, click Start, right-click on 'Computer' and select 'Properties' to view the information.