Ive got an incremental backup as a profile and it takes a full backup of my E: drive (volume label is "Projects") on Monday mornings at 12:30AM. Each subsequent day is an incremental using DAYOFWEEK variables. On the external USB destination drive I: (volume label is "ioStore"), all 7 days are stored under a single root folder, so: DEV\BAK\1 DEV\BAK\2 DEV\BAK\3 and so on.
I recently had to replace the E: drive and now I'm realizing I have no idea how to restore the full + incrementals. Furthermore, I'm finding the language used in the help and the tutorials to be confusing. At one point it says that Source and Destination are swapped when doing a restore, and it also says that a restore is not reversible, so I'm very wary of going forward, especially since I ran several simulations just to try to understand what the heck is going on, and each time it says 425K files will be "deleted from source." Now, which source exactly? Is "source" in this context referring to my original source E: drive or the destination I: drive which it's now treating as source for purposes of restoring? There are no drive letters, volume names, serial numbers, nothing. Just \directory\filename and I have no idea which physical hard drive it's referring to and if restoring is going to wipe my backup I: drive clean or not.
Additionally, I don't understand why there should be any mention of "deleting" of anything when I'm trying to copy back from my I: external to my new E: drive internal.
I also need clarification on how the restore handles files that may have been physically moved on the original source E: drive. For example, in Monday's full backup, the file somefile.TGA may have been sitting in E:\Inbound\ and by Tuesday's incremental that same file may have been moved to E:\Outbound, so the external drive I: will now contain:
DEV\BAK\1\Inbound\somefile.TGA
DEV\BAK\2\Outbound\somefile.TGA
When DAY 1 full backup is restored first, it's going to:
1. restore somefile.TGA from DEV\BAK\1\Inbound\ to the E:\Inbound\ folder, right?
Then when DAY 2 incremental is restored, it's going to do 2 things on the E: drive:
1. restore somefile.TGA from DEV\BAK\2\Outbound\ to E:\Outbound\ (since this is the latest actual location of the file)
2. delete somefile.TGA from E:\Inbound\ (since this file no longer exists in this folder as of the Day 2 Incremental Backup)
Is that correct? Is that done automatically, or do I have to manually hunt down earlier deprecated instances of every file and delete them?
I really need a crystal clear step by step help with this restore, starting with restoring the full backup and then going through the incrementals, because it is not at all straightforward to me. If you could use my situation-specific E: internal drive (Projects) and I: external usb backup drive (ioStore) as the drive names as you walk me through it, that would be helpful. If I have a direct map in my mind as to which physical drive in my machine is being referred to by which identification in the prompts and tutorials, I'll probably understand this a lot better, but right now I'm hesitant to do anything for fear of wiping out my backups.
Sorry for the length of the post, I'm just trying to be very clear where I feel the tutorials are not. Plus it's a very frustrating situation losing a drive.
So, the first prompt I get when doing a simulated restore is:
Step 1 of 3
Prevent overwriting newer files on Source ?
Backup_Projects is configured to normally allow older files from Source to replace newer files on Destination. Because you are performing a restore, Destination and Source will temporarely change roles. As a result, during the restore, older files from Destination will replace newer files on Source. Since this may not be your intent: would you like to disable overwriting newer files on Source for the duration of this restore?
What do I do here? The E:\ drive is brand new and empty, and all I want to do is copy the entire DAY 1 full backup from external I:\ to internal E:\ drive as a first-step before moving on to restoring the incrementals from DAY 2 and on...
I recently had to replace the E: drive and now I'm realizing I have no idea how to restore the full + incrementals. Furthermore, I'm finding the language used in the help and the tutorials to be confusing. At one point it says that Source and Destination are swapped when doing a restore, and it also says that a restore is not reversible, so I'm very wary of going forward, especially since I ran several simulations just to try to understand what the heck is going on, and each time it says 425K files will be "deleted from source." Now, which source exactly? Is "source" in this context referring to my original source E: drive or the destination I: drive which it's now treating as source for purposes of restoring? There are no drive letters, volume names, serial numbers, nothing. Just \directory\filename and I have no idea which physical hard drive it's referring to and if restoring is going to wipe my backup I: drive clean or not.
Additionally, I don't understand why there should be any mention of "deleting" of anything when I'm trying to copy back from my I: external to my new E: drive internal.
I also need clarification on how the restore handles files that may have been physically moved on the original source E: drive. For example, in Monday's full backup, the file somefile.TGA may have been sitting in E:\Inbound\ and by Tuesday's incremental that same file may have been moved to E:\Outbound, so the external drive I: will now contain:
DEV\BAK\1\Inbound\somefile.TGA
DEV\BAK\2\Outbound\somefile.TGA
When DAY 1 full backup is restored first, it's going to:
1. restore somefile.TGA from DEV\BAK\1\Inbound\ to the E:\Inbound\ folder, right?
Then when DAY 2 incremental is restored, it's going to do 2 things on the E: drive:
1. restore somefile.TGA from DEV\BAK\2\Outbound\ to E:\Outbound\ (since this is the latest actual location of the file)
2. delete somefile.TGA from E:\Inbound\ (since this file no longer exists in this folder as of the Day 2 Incremental Backup)
Is that correct? Is that done automatically, or do I have to manually hunt down earlier deprecated instances of every file and delete them?
I really need a crystal clear step by step help with this restore, starting with restoring the full backup and then going through the incrementals, because it is not at all straightforward to me. If you could use my situation-specific E: internal drive (Projects) and I: external usb backup drive (ioStore) as the drive names as you walk me through it, that would be helpful. If I have a direct map in my mind as to which physical drive in my machine is being referred to by which identification in the prompts and tutorials, I'll probably understand this a lot better, but right now I'm hesitant to do anything for fear of wiping out my backups.
Sorry for the length of the post, I'm just trying to be very clear where I feel the tutorials are not. Plus it's a very frustrating situation losing a drive.
So, the first prompt I get when doing a simulated restore is:
Step 1 of 3
Prevent overwriting newer files on Source ?
Backup_Projects is configured to normally allow older files from Source to replace newer files on Destination. Because you are performing a restore, Destination and Source will temporarely change roles. As a result, during the restore, older files from Destination will replace newer files on Source. Since this may not be your intent: would you like to disable overwriting newer files on Source for the duration of this restore?
What do I do here? The E:\ drive is brand new and empty, and all I want to do is copy the entire DAY 1 full backup from external I:\ to internal E:\ drive as a first-step before moving on to restoring the incrementals from DAY 2 and on...