Restore only different files from backup versions

Support
1

Hi,
I would like to recover only the different files from two backup versions but I don’t know how to do that. Anyone can help me? Thank you.

2

You might need to expand on that. Is that files that existed in both versions, but changed between them?
So new files and deleted files aren’t of interest? I don’t think there’s any easy pushbutton method (is this particular use case something that would be of wide interest?) but The COMPARE command may help.

Backup detailed summary / file list gives some info, but then you need to read the output to feed restore.

3

yes

No. I’m also interested in delated and new files

With compare command I can get the list of files to restore but how to restore them?

4

Just like you restore any files.

Restoring files from a backup (GUI way, but requires lots of clicking – I hope you have few files to do)

The RESTORE command (CLI way, adapted from Export As Command-line, and given a list of files)

This will probably be easiest if you write scripts to help process, but you still need to decide things like handling of the below. New files will only exist in newer backup. Deleted files will only exist in older one.
This might call for two restore runs, because restore can only get files from one version of the backup.

If you are willing to say more about what you’re trying to do, there’s some chance there’s an easier way.

5

I need to restore some file that have been changed / added/ delated from older backup version without restoring the whole backups. I hope that i have been able to explain what i want to do.

GUI isn’t the way because I’ve too much files

  Added folders:     6
  Added files:       15
  Deleted folders:   1112
  Deleted files:     8272
  Modified folders:  68
  Modified files:    232

The easiest way would be to restore the two full backups and then determinate the differences betwen them.

An other way could be to restore the new files and modified ones form “version 0” and then restore delated and modified files form “version 1”.

6

I think this could be done if there was a way to save the file listing from the COMPARE command to a file, then specify this file (instead of a list of filenames) when using the RESTORE command.

Similar to how you can specify option=value parameters in a --parameters-file instead of on the command line.

I don’t think this approach is currently supported though, but I could be wrong. I tried placing the filenames to restore in the parameters-file but they were ignored.

7

If you’re willing to do the two restores, there are tools such as WinMerge to help determine the differences.

Alternatively, processing the compare output might let you cut this down to two restores, one of the deleted files (from the older backup), and one for the added and modified files (from the newer backup). You could possibly even pull this off in a good text editor. I’m not quite sure how compare output shows folder actions, e.g. if a folder is deleted, does it also identify all the now-deleted files. The list may be easier if it’s all files…

1 Like