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We have our backup program running, now it's time to try restoring a file from that backup.

After scheduling our backups to happen every night, it's time to see what they're good for. We're going to delete a file, and then restore it from a backup.

In fact, we're going to restore it from a backup of a couple of days earlier, so that not only will we restore it, but we'll restore it to an earlier point in time.

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Transcript

This is Leo Notenboom for askleo.net.

So far we've successfully installed Acronis TrueImage Home, created a bootable rescue media, performed a full backup, and scheduled incremental backups.

Now, we're actually going to restore a file from one of our backups.

You'll note I've got this little text file here on my desktop. It has some lines that I've been adding to it everyday for a few days. We're going to delete that file.

And, in fact, even kick it out of the recycle bin.

So now the only way I'm going to be able to get that file back is from a backup.

In Acronis, we now go over to the manage and restore option.

Here you'll see a list of the backups that have been taken recently.

I'm going to just arbitrarily choose one of the backups, say, September the second.

And what this does is actually opens a window in windows explorer on what your C drive, or what in this case, my C drive looked like on September the second at 1:00 in the morning.

What I'll do is I will go to my desktop which is in the user's username desktop folder.

There's demotext.text. I will copy it and, instead of putting it back directly onto my desktop, I'm just going to go ahead and put it into the my documents folder.

Now if I take a look at it, I can see that that is in fact exactly what it was on September the second at 1:00 in the morning.

The ability to walk through an image of your machine as it was as of a particular day or time is actually a pretty powerful thing and one of the reasons that incremental backups are so incredibly powerful.

Next step, of course, is what if your machine fails entirely and you need to restore the entire system image.

That will be our next video.

Article C3862 - September 5, 2009 « »

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Leo Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

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Recent Comments
10 Comments
Steve Sturgill
September 19, 2009 1:45 PM

Leo, The only difficulty, for me, in your splendid tutorials is that your version of Acronis seems different than mine? Mine is: Acronis® True Image Home® version 11.0 (build 8,101). Thanks.

Yep. The versions are very similar, but I had to run with the most current. Of course half way through this series they released a newer version yet, so I'm sure there are changes again. But the concepts, if not the specific mouse clicks, remain the same.
Leo
20-Sep-2009

Steve Sturgill
September 20, 2009 3:09 PM

Thank you sir. I'm gonna update right away. Keep up the good work. Your newsletter is invaluable. The BEST of it's kind!

Steve Sturgill
September 23, 2009 5:51 AM

Leo, I use MSN mail. Does Acronis Back that up as well? Thank you.

Acronis backs up what's on your computer. Information stored out on the web (like most web-based email services) is by definition NOT stored on your computer, and hence not backed up.
Leo
23-Sep-2009

Mark
November 14, 2010 10:13 AM

To Jim,

Here is step-by-step instructions on how to create e-mail backup using Acronis True Image:

- Launch Acronis True Image Home;
- Click Backup and Restore -> Next -> My E-mail -> Choose either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express (e-mail client you are using);
- On Backup Archive Location window unfold My Computer folder and choose an existing backup file to backup only changes that took place since the backup creation or enter file name for a new full backup (e.g. MyBackup.tib);
- Next Windows will show you three choices: 1) Create a new full backup, 2) Create an incremental backup, 3) Create a differential backup. Choose Create a new full backup -> Next -> Use default options -> Next -> Click proceed button.

regards,
Mark
http://www.allacronis.com

Louis
December 24, 2012 12:26 PM

I just installed the 30 day trial of TrueImage 2013. I made a backup of my partitions onto an external HD. Fine. Now I want to restore ONE file. I see no way of doing that. The tutorial is three years old and screens have changed. Please help me.
Louis Schmittrotoh