How to restore Clonezilla disk image to a partition?

Question

I did a backup of a 500GB HDD with one NTFS partition with Windows 7 using Clonezilla. There was about 100GB of data so I attached another SATA disk and created the image in the root. Now there is a directory with a lot of files that only Clonezilla can read... (ok, big mistake).

In the 500GB HDD I installed a Windows 10 and wish to restore some personal data from old installation, as documents, pictures, movies, etc.. I tried to use Virtual Box but Clonezilla won't mount the backup disk in a SATA to USB case. So I attached it again directly in the SATA port and boot from Clonezilla CD again - now I can see the image again! So I did a NTFS 120GB partition to put the old files, but now Conezilla wishes to restore ALL disk, erasing all partition and the new Windows 10.

I need to restore the image to the 120GB partition, files only, not all physical disk! How can I do it? Is there another way to access those files?

Answer 1

I finally could solve this mistery, after a lot o research and attemptings. I must say Clonezilla works good and has good reviews, but do not talk with another standards and the interface is horrible - an ambiguous situation. Whatever, let's do it!

My solution is for Windows 10 using Oracle Virtual Box. The idea is to create a Virtual Machine with two virtual HDD and the Optical Drive (where the Clonezilla will be launch from).

Firts, create the Virtual Machine for Windows 7 64 bits (in my case) with the 500GB virtual HDD (as the original backup) in VHD format - this is important: it's a format that both Windows and VirtualBox recognize.

Than create another virtual HDD VHD format, in my case with 120GB, using Computer Manager tools (Disk Manager). Creating with VirtualBox didn't work, Clonezilla didn't mount it.

Now copy the entire backup folder created by Clonezilla to the another virtual HDD. Windows will mount it and assign a letter so will be easy to copy-paste inside.

Now unmount this HDD from Windows and mount it in the virtual machine by VirtualBox. Start the virtual machine with Clonezilla CD inside the optical drive. Clonezilla should start and will mount both virtual HDD, and the option to restore the image will be available... finally!

Easy, hun?