Restoring your old .BKF backup files in Windows 7 and Windows 8

In Windows 2000 and Windows XP (and their server variants Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003), plenty of people (me included) used the Windows NT Backup application to back up files. This built-in utility created .BKF files, which were single files containing all the files backed up, similar to the way a ZIP file would work.

However, the .BKF file format is specific to Windows, and as far as I'm aware, is not documented on the Microsoft Open Specifications Page. Nonetheless, the BKF format is the same as the Microsoft Tape Format (MTF), which in turn has been documented by others.

When Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 came out, they didn't anymore contain the Windows NT Backup utility, so you could not directly restore your files. However, Microsoft made available the utility for Windows Vista and Server 2008 on their Downloads page, and you can still download a copy.

However, on Vista/Server 2008, the utility requires the Windows feature called "Removable Storage Management" to be installed on the machine. On these two operating systems, you can install this feature from the Control Panel under "Programs" and "Turn Windows Features on or off".

But, this feature is no longer part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and so even if the utility itself might work, the operating system feature it requires cannot anymore be used.

Luckily, Microsoft once made available an update called KB 974674, which describes this functionality for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. You can also download the utility, named "Windows6.1-KB974674-x86.msu", but unfortunately, as of today, the digital signature of this file has expired in 2010, and thus you cannot (by default) install the utility.

Similarly, on Windows 8, you cannot easily restore these files, even if the above application would work there: the digital signature expiration limits the usability of this utility.

So, what to do? My recommendation is simply to grab a copy of Windows Vista from MSDN, install the OS and the NTBackup utility on it, and restore your backups.

Hope this helps!