Guides › Restoring files
Restoring files
Restoring never needs a licence and never changes your backups. If in doubt, restore to a different folder first and look at what you got.
On the PC the files came from
- Click the BackupMate icon by the clock and choose Open BackupMate.
- In the Backups panel, press Restore on the backup that held the files.
- Choose a restore point. They are grouped by day, with the newest marked Latest. To get back something deleted last week, pick a day before it was deleted.
- Choose everything, or Choose files and folders and tick what you want. To find something without knowing where it was, type part of its name in the search box above the folders (see Finding a file by name).
- Choose where to put it. A new, empty folder is the safe choice; you can then copy what you need into place.
- Choose what happens if a file already exists there (see below). If you are restoring into an empty folder it makes no difference.
- Press Restore. A bar shows files and gigabytes done and the time remaining. You can close the window while it runs and reopen it to see progress.
If a file already exists
| Keep existing | The default. Files that are already in the folder are left exactly as they are; only what is missing is restored. Safe to use on a folder you are still working in. |
|---|---|
| Keep both | Nothing is replaced. Where a file already exists, the backed-up copy is put beside it with "(restored)" in its name, so you can compare the two. |
| Overwrite | Files that are there now are replaced with the backed-up copies. Use this to roll a folder back to how it was. It asks you to confirm, because it cannot be undone. |
Finding a file by name
Choose Choose files and folders and type in the search box above the folder tree. It looks through the whole restore point, not only the folder you have open.
| Type | Finds |
|---|---|
invoice | Any file or folder with "invoice" in its name, in capitals or not |
*.xlsx | Every Excel file. * stands for any letters, ? for exactly one |
2024/march | Anything whose folder path contains "2024/march" |
Tick what you want in the results. Clear the box to go back to the folders; what you ticked stays ticked. If the list says there are more matches than it is showing, type more of the name.
Restoring a great deal at once
A whole drive of hundreds of thousands of files takes time with any backup product: every file has to be created and written, however small. These make the most difference:
- Get the urgent things first. Restore the folder you need today, then start the rest. Search helps here.
- Use a network cable. A restore is limited by the slowest link between the PC and the server, and Wi-Fi is usually it.
- Check your antivirus. It scans every file as it is written. Most antivirus products let you exclude a folder or a program from real-time scanning; excluding the folder you are restoring into for the duration can speed a large restore considerably. Remove the exclusion afterwards.
- Make sure there is room. BackupMate refuses a restore that plainly will not fit, and tells you how much it needs.
From the server, when the PC is broken, lost or wiped
This is available when your server keeps a copy of the encryption keys (see Who holds the key). The server's Recover page says plainly if it is not available on your server, and why.
- On the server, open BackupMate Admin Console and go to Recover.
- Find the machine and press Recover files…
- Choose the point in time, then everything or particular files and folders. The same search box is there.
- Choose where to put it:
- Prepare a download for a few files. When it is ready, press Download; several files arrive as one zip.
- Restore to a folder on this server for anything large. Type or browse to a folder the server can reach: another drive, a USB disk, a network share. The files are written straight into a new folder inside it, named for the machine and the time, so nothing already there is touched.
- Nothing is written to the broken PC and nothing on it changes.
- A download is held on the server only for a short time, then deleted, because it is an unencrypted copy. Collect it promptly. If the server's own drive is short of room, use Restore to a folder instead, or move the staging folder under Settings → Recovery staging.
- Files restored to a folder are yours to look after: the server never deletes them, and they are not encrypted.
- Every recovery is recorded in the server's Event Log with your name, the machine and the point in time.
If the server does not hold the keys
Then the files can only be opened with the passphrase chosen when that PC was connected. Write to us and we will take you through recovering onto a replacement PC. Without the passphrase, nobody can open them.
If backups themselves have gone missing
If restore points you expect are not listed, they may have been deleted, by mistake or by malware on one of the PCs. The server keeps deleted backup data for 30 days.
- In the server's console go to Settings → Storage and protection → Deleted backup data.
- Enter how many hours back to go, to a time when things were still right, and press Put deleted data back.
Then find out what deleted them before anything else, and tell us; we will help.
Practise
Restore one file every month or so, from a different PC each time. It takes two minutes and is the only real proof that your backups work.