Disable All Backup Sets
The first recommended action to take in a restore situation is to disable your backup sets; this will prevent new backups from overwriting or displacing data that may need to be restored. To disable a backup set:
- Log in to the management portal and go to the computer account we want to restore from.
- Go to the Backup tab and click on the slider under the Scheduled field for each backup set to change them from blue to gray. This will switch them to "Manual" from "Automatic."
If the Backup Agent used to take backups is offline, you don't need to worry about disabling the backup sets as they will not run anyway.
First Scenario: Restoring Back to the Original Machine
If the computer on which you took backups is still intact and the Backup Agent is still running, you can use that agent to restore files back onto the machine to "fill in the blanks."
- Restore files and folders back to their original locations to replace missing files and/or overwrite corrupted ones or...
- Restore files and folders to an alternate destination on this machine. You can then go through the restored files to pick and choose which ones you want to copy back over to their original locations.
Second Scenario: Restoring to a Replacement Machine
Let's say the machine you were taking backups of dies and there is no hope of recovering it. Instead of trying to salvage the old computer, you will be replacing it with another machine and restoring files to it to recreate the old computer.
- Install the software on the new machine and pick the Move Account to This Computer option during setup.
- Perform a restore of the files back to their original location to have the Backup Agent recreate the file and folder hierarchy it was backing up.
Third Scenario: Restoring to an Alternate Machine Not Involved in Backups
If you want to restore files to a machine not involved in past or future backups of this data, you can do so the following way:
- Install the software on this machine and pick the Recovery Mode Installation option during setup.
- Perform a restore of the data you want.
- Copy the data you restored off of this machine and transfer it to its intended destination or recipient.
- Uninstall the software.