Cannot just restore entire file / folder structure in desktop version

[bowen2011]

Hi there,

Just installed Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Desktop Edition. I've setup all my backups no problem. I am not using the backup my entire computer / recovery point option as it is not appropriate to image the entire drive. I just need to back up the server shares (about 6 folders with many subfolders and files totalling approx 75 gigabytes) on a daily basis.

The issue I'm having is that I cannot find a way to just restore all of the folders and their contents in their entirety (as I would need to do in the event of a hard drive failure). When I select recover my files it brings up a search window with "find files to recover". If I type in the name of the top level folder (containing all server shares / subfolers) it appears in the window but if I right click it the option to recover files is greyed out meaning I can't just recover the whole thing. When i double click it it list ALL the files inside including many versions of each that have been incrementally backed up. I can't even just highlight all and restore as it says "my search criteria returned more files than can be displayed". I can see no way to just restore the whole folder structure like I would have done in NTBackup

I can't understand why it would be designed like this - surely there must be a way to just do a restore of the most recent file and folder backup in its entirety? There's no reference to this in any of the literature / reviews - I cannot believe there could be such a fundamental oversight?

Cheers,

James.

[Markus_Koestler]

Afaik you're right: You can't do it.

[criley · Accepted solution]

Markus is correct - you cannot do this at present.

I will see if I can find out if we have any plans to change this behavior.

An alternative approach would be to backup the entire volume. You can then mount the recovery point as a new volume and restore the data that way (i.e. just copy the folders). Of course, this assumes you have enough space somewhere to allow you to backup the entire volume.

[Markus_Koestler]

May I ask you to mark this post as solved ?

[bowen2011]

Of Course - many thanks for the feedback. Just wanted to check a couple of things first:

1) Chris: How will you let me know if there are any plans to change this behaviour. Any idea why they've done it this way - It seems like a major shortcoming of an otherwise great piece of software.

2) If I do go down the recovery point route - is there any way to setup exclusions from a recovery? That way I could put all non-critical data into seperate folders on the same volume then exclude these from the daily recovery point.

Cheers,

James.

[criley]

James,

1. I'll reply back to this thread once I get a response. I can't answer why it was designed that way as that is not something that I'm involved in - sorry.

2. Unfortunately no. Again, I believe this may be something that we are looking at for the future but it's currently not possible to exclude data from a recovery point backup.

[bowen2011]

No problem at all and many thanks for the help.

Should I mark the thread as solved or leave it open in the meantime?

[criley]

Should I mark the thread as solved or leave it open in the meantime?

That's entirely up to you. Just mark the response that you feel has best answered your questions as the solution. This will not 'close' the thread so I and others can still add comments.

[bowen2011]

Many thanks for the feedback Markus - I appreciate you answered first and that your answer was correct. I selected Chris's answer as the solution as it is what I will do and it represents a valid workaround for anyone else browsing this forum. I will shift all non-essential data from the data partition and use a daily recovery point system - mounting the volume in the event of failure.

Chris: I will check back periodically - if you could give me any updates on the issue it would be greatly appreciated as I plan on rolling this solution out to lots of customers who do not run server operating systems and do not want to pay for the full server version.

[criley]

James,

I've passed information about this 'issue' onto our product management team for consideration. There's not much else I can say at this point. It will be considered and hopefully the design of this particular part of the product will be improved in a future release.

Hope that helps.

[bowen2011]

Many thanks for all the help and I appreciate you taking the time to pass that on.

I have started reconfiguring the backups so they do a recovery point of the entire data partition (instead of the files and folders option). When i used the granular restore option it worked exactly how I wanted allowing me to restore entire folders with directory structures intact.

I just wondered if the recovery point method I am now using is as reliable as a normal backup or whether they were prone to errors or failures (as I've found with other imaging software in the past). In general Symantec backup is regarded as very reliable and (unlike NTbackup) if it says a backup has passed you can be fairly certain it has - will this still be the case. Also should is it important to check the backup validation option?

Many thanks again.

[criley]

Just make sure you enable the 'Verify recovery point after creation' option if you are concerned about corrupt/invalid backups.

You should also do test restores periodically (this applies to ANY backup software) to confirm that you can successfully restore.

[Dushan_Gomez]

Wow, when will that feature is announced ?

[bowen2011]

Have done - cheers pal.

Got the system in place on quite a few installations and its working really well. Nice and easy to do test restores too as you can just quickly explore the restore points and verify that the files open.

Thanks again for the help.