Advanced Restore Options: Sessions.
This section is designed to introduce you to some of the additional restore features.
Session Information
Each information window of the Main Form can be toggled by clicking the appropriate tab button.
The Session Details form displays a session number, the date that the session was taken and the comment that was added when the backup finished. Use the Right Click / Restore from Session option to restore from the selected session.
Use the Right Click / Edit Comment option to alter the comment.
Useful comments might be, 'This backup was made just prior to opening a dodgy looking e-mail attachment', 'Just prior to loading the Quake 47 demo' etc.
Using the comments can help when choosing a restore session e.g. when you want to restore your PC to some date in the past, or following an 'Emergency Backup' restore, to bring your PC up to date.
Restoring using Sessions
If you wish to restore one or more individual files you probably will want to see all versions of each file, here you will leave the Restore Session on the default All Sessions.
The form below shows 8 generations (Versions) of the file AISBackup.log.
Generation 26, backed up in session 27 has been selected for restore. If you want
to select another version of a file click the
symbol next to the filename. The
session number is specified by the 'C' parameter in the Sessions column.
The gaps in the generation (version) numbers is a result of
advanced session pruning been used with this backup
job.
The restore files selection form is shown with the files window expanded. The Folder containing the AISBackup files has been selected.
The columns of this form are:
|
Name: |
The name of the file. | |
| Gen: | The Generation (Version) number of the file, the higher the generation number the newer the file. | |
| Size: | The size of the file in kilobytes. | |
| Type: | The type of file (if registered with Windows). | |
| Modified: | The date the file was last modified. | |
| Sessions: | C = The session the file was backed up in. D = The session the file was deleted or replaced. Z = The number of the zip file where the file is stored. |
|
|
Media: |
The name of the media or drive where the backup file resides. |
If you want to restore a number of files back to a specified date, things would get pretty tedious if you had to carefully select many files manually. The Backup Sessions provides a quick way of displaying only the files that were backed up on a specific date.
Either select the desired session from the Select Session form:
or select the session from the Restore From Session drop down list.
If one or more files could not be backed up the session is shown in red, see the Select Session form, above.
Selecting Session 119 for 2 November 2005 changes the file display to:
You will notice that only the files that existed when session 119 was created are shown. If you look at the Sessions column you will see that the files were backed up (Cnn) in session 119 or earlier and deleted (superseded) after Session 122. The absence of the 'D' indicates that the file is the current file existing on the PC, as shown by the file AISBackup.mps.
The Restore From Session list is not displayed if the backup is of the Generation Number type.
If you cannot find a file in the restore list, for example you may of forgotten which folder it is in, Click Find.
For details of the Find option click Find in the above picture.
Once you have selected the files that you want to restore click Next.