No recovery due to incomplete information

Support
1

Special recovery problem
Especially because this problem arose from one’s own forgetfulness/stupidity.
For the first time, I used duplicati instead of my conflicting backup program.

During the conversion process (old PC to new PC) I made incorrect/illegible
documentation at a crucial point when backing up the data to an external hard drive
and now I cannot restore the data. The old PC is no longer available and the
ld hard drives are no longer there.
(OS: Windows 10/64, duplicati 2.0.8.1_beta_2024-05-07)
I am fully aware that recovery of encrypted data is not possible if some information
is missing, but some information is available. My aim is to solve problems in small steps.
I have the following questions:

  1. The simplest question is: how do I access my backed up data?
  2. How can I get the name of the saved task?

Can anyone give me some tips?

Werner
PS: My English is not the best!

2

What? If encrypted (check destination for .aes suffix), you need the encryption passphrase.

How did you set up the new Duplicati? Does it have anything that the old computer had had?

3

The duplicati files are encrypted - with .aes suffix!
My dilemma: the passphrase is the task name! (knowing that this name
does not change when switching - fatal assumption!)

When reinstalling the OS, no data from the old computer was used - the hard drives were defective!

a. Is the user name relevant for recovery?
b. Is the passphrase used for user specification also used for backup?

4

They don’t have to be, but apparently you chose AES. Passphrase is needed for decryption.

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It is stored in Duplicati to avoid having to be retyped, but is lost if computer system gets lost.
Because this may happen, one needs to keep info safely somewhere else. Many ways exist.

Import and export backup configurations is good, but one should at least preserve basics for

Direct restore from backup files which explains:

To restore files from the backup, Duplicati needs only to know how to access the files and the encryption passphrase (if any). If you do not have the passphrase, it is not possible to restore.

I don’t follow that, but if task name means job name, it does not change if migrated properly.

Migrating Duplicati to a new machine
This page describes how to best migrate a Duplicati instance to a new machine

It could be, but it depends on how you set up backup. Restore may need to change location.

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I don’t know what user specification is, as Duplicati GUI password has no user specification.
If you mean is the GUI password the backup encryption password, you get to set them both.
A user can of course set both the same. Before Duplicati 2.1, many used no GUI password.
Duplicati 2.1 (what are you on?) now requires one, but the per-job encryption stays optional.

is a good hint if you can find the job name (assuming that’s what task name means), but the Duplicati configuration got lost when its computer died. Are you sure nothing is recoverable?

Do you have emails or http reports sent anywhere that could help? Can you remember jobs?

Because Duplicati jobs must have their own folders, did your folder names follow job names?
This is your choice, but is a good one even before disaster in order to know what a folder has.
It can work well with “Direct restore from backup files” which would need folder name anyway.
If passphrase is related to that folder name, that would be a convenient but less secure setup.

5

The files to be restored were created for temporary storage only, for this I usually use a simple password and after successful restoration the backup data is deleted.
After about an hour of unsuccessfully entering the passwords I used for temporary backup, I looked for the password in my recorded and already disposed documentation - and found it!!
This morning the data recovery was successful - SUCCESSFUL
My thanks to ts678 for his help, especially for the last post.
Werner

2 Likes
6

I realize you have managed to recover :star_struck: , but I just wanted to document this for others finding this thread.

The restore depends only on the passphrase and the files. If things go terribly wrong, there is a RecoveryTool that can restore without any optimization and such:

And if .NET stops working, and other unexpected things, there is a Python script to restore with:

7

Good to know! I made a note of it!