Database Restore Takes Over 5 Days/Looking for Alternatives

1

Hi everyone,

I’m having a serious issue with restoring my Duplicati database. I’ve been trying, in vain, to restore the database since mid-February, which is also when my last backup was. The restore process is taking well over 5 days to complete each time I try.

If a database restore is interrupted, there’s no way to resume it, and we must delete the whole thing and start again from scratch each time.

I’ve been pausing the job whenever possible (and not shutting down) to take the laptop to my workplace, but something inevitably goes wrong. Twice I’ve accidentally triggered a restart myself. Other times, it restarts due to scheduled late-night Windows updates, the router drops out and the restore fails, or any number of unexpected interruptions happen. I’ve done my best to mitigate these risks, but realistically, it’s extremely difficult to keep a week-long restore process running on a laptop without interruption—especially when that portable machine is still needed for day-to-day work.

I’ve attempted using the old RecoveryTool method to rebuild the database from my remote backup files, but it turns out that tool doesn’t work if I don’t have the right file types present, so it’s been of no help in this case.

I’m hoping for advice on how to speed up the restore process, or get a minimally restored database and slowly add backups to it, or otherwise work around the inability to resume a restore job. My most recent backup is now approaching two months old, which is getting pretty dangerous, and despite many attempts, I haven’t made any real progress.

It’s just not practical to rely on a restore process that takes a week but can’t be resumed.

Also, if anyone has any solutions, or recommendations for decent alternatives to Duplicati, I’d love to hear them.

Any insights, workarounds, or recommendations for the current situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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I assume you mean Recreate (or Repair with no DB). Restore is from a backup.

Are there any computers available that can stay in one location? If so, use one.

Databases can move. Two active systems are bad, but you’re not near that yet.

RecoveryTool is for restore not for regaining database, unless it’s backed up. Occasionally people will backup database, but more usually, one recreates it.

Can you clarify that, or post errors? I “think” it uses dlist and dblock files.
Ordinary Recreate uses dlist and dindex, going for dblock if necessary.
A dindex is supposed to index one dblock, thus avoiding dblock fetching.

The last 30% on the progress bar is downloading dblock files. 90% to 100% becomes very slow because it’s an exhaustive search for missing information.

If you like to see what it’s doing, watch About → Show log → Live → Verbose.

What’s the Destination storage type and speed? Maybe you can copy to faster, similarly to how a stays-in-place computer can help. Got a fast desktop handy?

Something with an SSD (if you don’t have one) is another way to speed things.

How big a backup is this?

Windows has performance tools such as Task Manager to show what got busy. Without any performance measurements, it’s hard to say what may slow things.

You can (if Destination space is available for another folder), start a new backup based on the current one. Export it, Import as new job, change name and folder.

Duplicati can only run one operation at a time, but if you move the Recreate to a different system, you can do a new fresh backup (maybe big upload?) for awhile. Merging them if the old backup comes back can’t be done, so you’d choose one.

I take it there has never been an error message from Recreate that wasn’t purely environmental (e.g. unexpected interruptions)? There’s very litle info to work with.