Comments on: Missing Mediaid.bin file

By: Craig Quik

Craig Quik — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:36:03 +0000

Better than Microsoft’s support pages (not hard). Thanks a lot!

By: CGC

CGC — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:34:14 +0000

In step 3, there wasn’t any instructions to follow. And in step 4, where to find the “catalogs” directory?

By: Michele

Michele — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:57:24 +0000

Where is your backup set located on e: the root or within a subfolder on e: ?

By: Chema Sanz

Chema Sanz — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:53:02 +0000

Well, thanks for this post. In fact I get the Mediaid file with your indications, but once the Restore utility is started it still says it does not find a valid backup/restore file set. And everyting is there: the catalog, the zip files, etc.

Any clue of what might be happening?

Thanks

By: Problemas al restaurar copia de seguridad Windows 7, error MediaID.bin. Restaurar archivo MediaID.bin « Bichotll's Blog

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:07:04 +0000

[...] http://www.hm2k.com/posts/missing-mediaidbin-file [...]

By: Mak Tal Oz

Mak Tal Oz — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:15:15 +0000

This walk-through for recreating the mediaid.bin file is spot on! However, for those of us that sometimes tend to take things a bit to literally, I’d just like to clarify step #7 a bit to alleviate any potential confusion:

After accessing the correct drive letter for your backup, “e:\” in my case, the EXACT command I typed to recreate the mediaid.bin file was as follows,

sdutil mediaid GlobalCatalog.wbcat e:\

The only difference that should exist in the above command is the letter of the drive where your backup resides.

Again, this walk-through is very helpful, I just didn’t want anyone else to waste time making the same mistake I did (trying to run the command as “sdutil mediaid GlobalCatalog.wbcat [backup drive e:\]“).

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:37:40 +0000

Thank you, thank you! I had the same problem, search Google and Microsoft and couldn’t come up with anything that would work, and was not about to call MS tech support. Bill’s comment (above) was the key – follow the steps EXACTLY. On Windows 7, right click on command prompt and run as an Administrator. Also, Windows file explorer may not let you search the backup directory, but if you use something like xplorer2, its a breeze. Once I figured out the above, the fix took two minutes and saved 500GB worth of backup. You are a lifesaver.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:32:50 +0000

Once I followed your instructions “exactly”, it worked perfectly. BTW the backup was originally created on an XP machine, than at some time copied to a vista machine and by the time I needed to restore a file I was on WIndows 7. If you follow the instructions it works perfectly. Thanks a bunch!

By: Mike Akridge

Mike Akridge — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:39:23 +0000

This is a great post but I have a bigger problem. I used my HP HomeServer to backup my Vista 32 system and have now upgraded to Vista 64 to run 8 GM RAM so I don’t know the the location on the server. I assume it is at my \servername\ on my network and not sure if the same solution will work. Unfortunatly “ALL” my company files are on there and I need to get them ASAP. Any solutions? PLease I need the help.

By: Lin

Lin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:24:56 +0000

the most helpful answer yet. And I have done quite a bit of searching for a solution to this problem. Unfortunately when I get to the very last step listed (#7) and hit enter I get a message that says: “sdutil is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file” and i do not get the mediaid. bin file
Any suggestions why this is coming up this way? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks