Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

I found an old backup file and have done a bunch of research but going in circles so hoping I might be able to get a little help.

The backup is in a folder named BMR > USER-PC > image and there are two files - image.bmr and image.bmr$D

I'm assuming that these are Bare Metal Recovery files but I'm uncertain on how to recover this. I've tried creating a VMWare and doing the BMR through Windows Vista and Windows Server (the backup was created in 2009) but I'm not having much success. I can't tell if this is due to an incorrect network recovery directory (the files are on a hard drive, I've tried sharing via network, but not having much success).

Does anyone have any insight on a definitive process that might help recovery these files either to a VMWare, or know of any software that might help me extract the data from them? I've tried carving them using photorec/testdisk, but no luck - I'm assuming that since it's BMR, they are packed.

Appreciate any help anyone might be able to provide!

I've never encountered the BMR file extension before, but would assume that whatever application used to make the backup would likely be needed to reverse the process.

Are you able to look at the headers of the files to determine the software that was used?

You can determine whether the file is packed (incompressible) by recompressing it, or portions of it.