Overview

Best Practices

User Interface

Using the Dashboard

Destination Details

Backup Details

Restore Options

System State Backup

Account Settings

System Settings

Network Servers

Email Settings

Users

Advanced Settings

Network Servers

Detailed Explanations

Common Email Servers

Continuous Data Protection

Disaster Recovery

Regular Expressions

Shadow Copy

Technical FAQ

Alerts FAQ

Using the Restore Page

The Restore page is supposed to emulate the familiar Windows File Explorer detailed interface. The left side of the screen contains folders that you can click to open. The right side of the screen contains files and folder that you can double-click to open or single-click to select. You may shift-click or ctrl-click to selected multiple objects on the right.

The Search field in the upper right lets you search for files by name. It does not require a '*' so if you type, for example, .txt then the program will search for all text files. While DDPER searches there will be a small rotating circle showing next to search. When DDPER finishes the search the rotating circle disappears.

The Show as Of field lets you change the display to show the state of the backup system as of that date. So, you can restore a folder as-of-a-date easily. You may also just click individual backup versions in the lower right list to restore a specific version of a file.

Restore Options

Access rights

Every file and folder has a list of who can access it and how. These are called access rights. When you restore a file you may not want it to keep access rights, especially if restoring to a different computer. Generally, however, you do want to keep them. If you do not keep access rights the file will be restored as a standard (not-system not-hidden read/write available to everyone) file.

Restore Junctions

These are different ways to restore junction points. See below.

Junction Paths

These are different ways to restore paths pointed to by junctions. See below.

Restore From

Which destination to restore from. Each destination may contain different folders and files and different versions of those folders and files.

Restore To

You can either restore to where the file/folder came from originally, or to any specific folder.

Show as Of

If you want to restore the contents of a folder as of a specific date or groups of files from a specific date-time you can set that here and the folder display will be an image of the backup from that point in time.

Introduction to Reparse Points

A reparse point is something in the file system that's not a file or a folder. Unlike a file (which has data) and a folder (which has files) a reparse point is a pointer to other things (files and folder). Windows uses reparse points often, so for example, when any user runs, they have a folder on the hard drive named "Documents" that really points to C:\Users\Myname\Documents where Myname is the user's name.

What to do with a reparse point during backup and restore is a complex question. Do we back up the reparse point (pointer) or do we back up the actual pointed-to data. If you tell us to backup Documents do you really just want the pointer backed up? Sometimes...

Reparse Points

Here we will talk only about Junctions and Symbolic Links (Symlinks), both of which are Reparse Points. Reparse points currently exist on NTFS only.

A Junction is a link to a folder, specified by the full path.

A Symlink is a link to a file or folder, and may be specified with a full path (C:\Tmp) or a relative path (..\Tmp)

One example of how a person may use a symlink: when solving for lack of free space on the system drive (let it be C:\). Move some "heavy" folders (Documents) to some other drive (D:\), and create a junction to that new location. As a result the system drive will have extra free space and all programs that used to work with old path (Documents on C:) will work successfully.

Backup

1. We backup Junctions and Symlinks unchanged with all attributes. This means we can restore them unchanged.
2. By default, we do not follow the reparse point to where it leads unless the specified backup path is the reparse point. The reason for this is that reparse points are located in some unexpected locations for backward OS compatibility. Example: inside the Documents folder are pointers to Videos, Music, and Photos, and we don't  want to backup Videos when we backup Documents

Restore

On restore we let you decide between three algorithms: On, Automatic, and Off. On always restores pointed-to data. Off never restores pointed-to data.

For the majority of users, we recommend Automatic. What matters here is where we restore data to. We divide into Original (put the data back) and Alternative (a new folder) destinations. The simplest is restoring to the Original destination.

• When restoring to Original destination users expect unchanged data, just like it was backed up. To get the junction/symlink, and not the pointed-to folder with contents.
• When restoring to Alternative destination user expect to get a copy of the pointed-to data that was backed up, not just the reparse point. So we convert all reparse points to ordinary files and folders.

Advanced Restore

For advanced users, we provide additional options:

• Junction Paths specifies how to restore reparse points
• Restore Junctions specifies whether we should follow reparse point and additionally restore content, where reparse point leads to.

See complete table with options: