Restoring a Backup

Restoring a backup in SyncBackFree is a simple matter of selecting a profile and clicking the 'Restore' button located in the lower menu (you may also select 'Restore' from the main menu under 'Task', or 'Restore' from the right-click menu). Note that you cannot run a restore with a Synchronize profile.

When a profile is run as a Restore the following dialog appears (unless you kept the SHIFT key pressed while clicking the Restore button, or you have previously switched off this dialog):

Click Yes to continue. The Restore Wizard then analyzes your profile and will ask a set of questions related to how you want the files restored. Note that some of the question may not appear if your profile is configured in such a way that the question is not required or relevant. Once you have gone through all the steps (or click the Restore Now button to skip all the steps) the restore process will begin.

After these steps, and the source/left and destination/right are scanned, the Differences window will appear. This gives you another opportunity to abort and also examine and optionally change which files will be restored and how they are restored.

If your backups are incremental or differential, i.e. you are using variables in your destination, then you'll need to think about what order to restore in.

For a differential backup you would restore the full backup first, followed by the newest differential backup. However, if your last backup run was a full backup then you only need to restore from the full backup.

For an incremental backup you would restore the full backup first, followed by oldest incremental backup to the newest incremental backup. However, if your last backup run was a full backup then you only need to restore from the full backup. For example, if your backups are stored at D:\My Backup\%DAYOFWEEK%\, and you do a full backup on Monday, and today is Wednesday (and today's backup has already run) then you'd restore Monday first (D:\My Backup\1\), then Tuesday, and finally Wednesday. This makes sure you have the newest files restored as they will overwrite older files already restored. It also makes sure you restore all your files because the incremental backup directories will only contain some of your files.

If the last run of the profile was not a success then the following question will be asked:

Click Yes to continue to the next step, or click No (or Abort) to abort the restore.

If the profile, or one of the profiles in the group, is configured to move files (

this feature is only available in SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro) then the following question will be asked:

Obviously when restoring you would not want your backup files moved as you would lose your backup files. It would be better to copy them so after the restore you still have the backup files. It is recommended that you abort the restore and reconfigure your profile to not move files. You can then restore and afterwards change the profile configuration back to its original settings.

If the profile, or one of the profiles in the group, is configured to delete all the files in the source/left and/or destination/right then the following question will be asked:

Obviously when restoring you would not want your backup or original files deleted. It is recommended that you abort the restore and reconfigure your profile to not delete all the files. You can then restore and afterwards change the profile configuration back to its original settings.

If the profile, or one of the profiles in the group, is configured to delete files that are only in the destination/right then the following question will be asked:

When restoring you would probably not want files only in the source/left to be deleted (as this is a restore the source/left becomes the destination). It’s recommended you click Yes to skip the files instead of deleting them.

If the profile, or one of the profiles in the group, is not configured to keep newer files (

this feature is only available in SyncBackSE and SyncBackPro) then the following question will be asked:

When restoring you probably do not want to replace any newer original files with older backup files. It’s recommended you click Yes to skip the older files.

If the profile, or one of the profiles in the group, is configured to run a program before and/or after the profile then the following question will be asked:

When restoring you may not wish to run those programs. Click Yes to still run the programs, or No to not have them run.

You are given the opportunity to restore to a different folder. This is especially useful if:

•You wish to use a different empty folder to force a full restore, and/or segregate the resulting restored files from the original source/left files

•You wish to restore only a subset of your files, and are thus specifying a particular sub-folder on each side

•Your source/left folder (where the files will be restored to) contains variables

If you are planning to restore to a sub-directory of your original source directory (or, to somewhere else altogether), you may have issues with file & folder selections and filters. See the Restoring and Selections section for more details.

You are given the opportunity to restore from a different folder. This is especially important if your destination/right folder (where the files will be restored from) contains variables:

If you are planning to restore from a sub-directory of your original destination directory (or, from somewhere else altogether), you may have issues with file & folder selections and filters. See the Restoring and Selections section for more details.

If you changed the directory to restore from a sub-directory of your destination then it is strongly advised that you switch off the filters and selections. See the Restoring and Selections section for more details.

In some cases you may want the group to run in reverse. For example, if you have a group that does a backup to a Zip file then copies the Zip file to an FTP server you probably need to run this in reverse, i.e. first retrieve the Zip file then unzip.

If you are restoring from a spanned/split Zip file and the profile is configured to prompt if a file cannot be replaced because it is busy, then you are asked if you’d instead like to replace those files on reboot. The reason is because no prompt can be made in this situation.