How to access inside 2TB img file?

TrueNAS General
1

Hi there, I made a backup of a Windows install with the Disks program in an Ubuntu live environment that ended up making a 2TB img file. Now I need to access some of the content inside, but the usual steps I’m finding online aren’t working. What I’ve tried is below. Now I don’t think I can/should install ntfs tools for truenas to see it.. but I don’t have any extra 2TB+ drives to move this file to another machine or anything.

Anyone have any advice? Or even a recommendation on how to backup whole disks in the future that will let me both restore the disk totally and view the contents of it, even for ntfs drives? Thanks.

What I’m doing:

root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# fdisk -l win10-2024.img 
Disk win10-2024.img: 1.82 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 730D51D7-9B1E-4FA0-8B56-0DBD5DE04AD1
Device               Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
win10-2024.img1       2048     206847     204800  100M EFI System
win10-2024.img2     206848     239615      32768   16M Microsoft reserved
win10-2024.img3     239616 3906003671 3905764056  1.8T Microsoft basic data
win10-2024.img4 3906004992 3907026943    1021952  499M Windows recovery environment

root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# sudo losetup --find --show --partscan win10-2024.img 
/dev/loop0

root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# lsblk /dev/loop0
NAME      MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0       7:0    0  1.8T  0 loop 
├─loop0p1 259:0    0  100M  0 part 
├─loop0p2 259:1    0   16M  0 part 
├─loop0p3 259:2    0  1.8T  0 part 
└─loop0p4 259:3    0  499M  0 part 

root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# mkdir /mnt/win10-2024
   
root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/win10-2024 
mount: /mnt/win10-2024: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

root@SHFN[...r5/Personall/Large Backups/win10-2024]# mount /dev/loop0p3 /mnt/win10-2024
mount: /mnt/win10-2024: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
2

Install a Windows virtual machine and add this image as the second disk?

3

That, or boot (temporarily) from a live image of an OS that has support NTFS.

4

Alright, finally had some time to come back to this. Trying the VM method first, but trying to attach a second disk only gives me the options for a zvol. When researching this before, I saw some say to dd the .img into a zvol, I’m hesitant to try starting that due to the time and storage requirements of such large file and not knowing if it would even work. I have enough storage, its just going to put me closer than I’d wish to full.

I did see a possible option to add a device → raw disk image. After some permission changes (.img file needed to be executable) I was able to attach it to the VM as stated, but it doesn’t show in diskpart nor disk management. Also trying CD-ROM I get the error “The path must be a dataset or a directory within a dataset.” and I get that both when the parent folder or the .img is directly selected. Which direction is going to be best to follow here?

I want to try the live boot option, but given the disruption of doing so I can’t quite yet. That one should be fairly easy though right, in an ubuntu live image just run “sudo zpool import -o readonly=on -f tank” and then do that other loop device stuff I mentioned in the first post?

Thanks to anyone kind enough to help me with this weird edge case I ended up putting myself in. I’m tempted to buy a 2Tb+ drive to just write back onto the drive the same way I pulled it, but am hoping not to spend the money if I don’t have to.