Personal Backup Version 5.2
	© 2012, J. Rathlev, IEAP, Kiel University

  Restore data from backup

In the event that data has been lost and must be restored from a backup, the program offers the Restore function. Clicking this button will open a dialog window in which you can select from which directory you wish to restore and to which directory the files are to be copied.

  List of most recently-used Restore tasks

The program will always retain a list of recently-used Restores. Select the name of the restore task to load it into the Restore window.

Select the location of the backed up files for Restore

When restoring files, you must consider how the data was backed up (see Backup destination):

• The backup directory is on a local storage medium or on a network drive
  Data can be restored from single files or from zip files:
  • Select the root directory if the data was saved as single files (even if compressed and/or encrypted).
  • Select the zip file in the root directory if the data was saved as one zip file per subdirectory. All subdirectories must contain a zip file of the same name.
  • Select a single zip file if all data was saved there.
• The backup directory is on an FTP server
  A direct restore is only possible if your data was saved as single files (even if compressed and/or encrypted). In all other cases you need to restore in two steps:
  1. First restore all required zip files including the directory structure to a temporary local folder. For this step you can use Personal Backup in Restore mode for single files or any FTP client such as FileZilla or Total Commander.
  2. Then restore the files from the local folder as described above.
  FTP settings for restore
  Clicking the button will open a dialog to configure the FTP server connection parameters (see here):
  
  After clicking the button, the program will connect to the FTP server and read the remote directory tree of the backup for the user to select a subdirectory.

Restore to

Files can be restored either to the original source directory or to any other location:

• Source directory: The source path will be derived from the pathname of the backup folder. A restore to source is only possible if you backed up the data with the option Drives separated, so that drive identifiers (such as LwC, LwD, ...) are part of the backup directory path.
• Selected directory: In this case you must browse for the directory where the files are to be restored. Clicking the button will open a dialog where you can select the directory. In this mode, the restore function can be used to make copies of all backed-up files in their original directory structure at a different location, e.g. on another computer.

Unpack gz files

This option must be selected if the backup was made into single compressed files. In this case, all files will automatically be unpacked on restore (default setting).
 

No decryption of enc files

Personal Backup adds the file extension enc for uncompressed encrypted files. These files are decrypted automatically on restore. If there are files from another application using this extension, the decryption will fail. You can prevent the program from decrypting such files by checking this option.
 

File filters

By using filename filters, filenames matching certain criteria may be included or excluded. Use the same rules as described for backup file filters (Standard file filter or Regular expressions).
 

Exclude security copies

If Security copies were created during backup and synchronization, normally there is no need to restore these files. In this case the appropriate checkboxes should be ticked (default) and the settings used during backup should be specified:

• Security copies created during backup
  Specify the same settings you used for the security copies during backup to exclude these files from restore. If placeholders were used for the suffix of the security copies, clicking the button will insert the appropriate filter mask. If a number of prior versions has been saved, replace the counter with the "#" character (e.g. bak-#).
• Security copies created during synchronization
  Specify the same settings you used for the security copies during backup to exclude these files and directories from restore. If placeholders were used, clicking the button will insert the appropriate filter masks.

File age

You can specify whether you want to restore only files newer or older than a given fixed or relative date.

• Relative to actual date: newer or older than the specified number of days, weeks, months or years
• Fixed date: newer or older as this date

Other options

Retain empty directories
If this option is selected, even empty directories will be restored.
Restore creation time
If this option is selected, also the Creation time of the files will be restored.
 

Mail delivery after restore

Similar to the option for backups, a mail with status information and optionally a log file can be sent after performing a restore task. The settings are the same as for backup.
 

Options

Here you can specify whether existing files are always to be overwritten, or only when they are older than those from your backup, or never.

Settings for time comparison

Comparing the timestamps of files is problematic when using different file systems. Adjust the settings to be system-independent.
 

Log settings

Clicking the button will open a dialog to adjust the log settings for restore.
Click then button to view the current log.
 

Start restore

Clicking the button will start the restore. Before restoring any files, the program will create and display a list of all files that match the filter conditions. If the selection is not to your liking, you can cancel the restore at this point and adjust your settings. It is also possible to select or deselect files or directories individually by tagging the checkboxes.

Right-clicking a file will open a local menu that allows its contents to be viewed or compared with the source (if available). The selections required for the external viewer and comparison program can be made by clicking the button:

• View file: If no special viewer such Lister.exe (see Total Commander package) was selected, the Windows default file type settings will be used to start the associated program. Compressed or encrypted files will be processed beforehand.
• Compare file: You can use the open source program WinMerge for comparing files. Compressed or encrypted files will be processed before loading.

Loading and saving restore tasks

Clicking the button will save a configured restore task with all settings to disk. To load a saved task, click the button.

A saved restore task can also be started from the command line. This makes it possible to use the Windows Task Scheduler to restore files at specific times, or to restore a directory (for example automatically on logon) by adding a shortcut to the Windows start menu (see All Programs ⇒ Startup):
PersBackup /restore <rest-task>