Restoring Data

In conjunction with the design of a backup strategy, you must create and verify restore procedures to ensure that appropriate personnel are knowledgeable in the concepts and skills that are critical to data recovery. This topic will share the processes and options available for restoring data using the Backup Utility.


Restoring with the Backup Utility

Restoring data is a straightforward procedure. After opening the Backup Utility and clicking the Restore And Manage Media tab as shown in below Figure, you will be able to select the backup set from which to restore. Windows Server 2003 will then display the files and folders that the backup set contains by examining the backup set’s catalog. You can then select the specific files or folders you wish to restore. As with the backup selection, a blue check mark indicates that a file or folder will be fully restored. A dimmed check mark on a folder means that some, but not all, of its contents will be restored.

You are also asked to specify the restore location. For this option, you have three choices:

■Original location: Files and folders will be restored to the location from which they were backed up. The original folder structure will be maintained or, if folders were deleted, re-created.

■Alternate location: Files and folders will be restored to a folder you designate in the Alternate Location box. The original folder structure is preserved and created beneath that folder, where the designated alternate location is equivalent to the root (volume) of the backed up data. So, for example, if you backed up a folder C:\Data\Finance and you restored the folder to C:\Restore, you would find the Finance folder in C:\Restore\Data\Finance.

■Single folder: Files are restored to the folder you designate, but the folder structure is not maintained. All files are restored to a single folder.

After selecting the files to restore and the restore location, click Start Restore. Click OK and the restore process will begin. Confirm that no errors occurred.


Restore Options

Windows Server 2003 supports several options for how files in the restore location are handled during a restore. The following options are found in the Backup Utility’s Tools–Options command, on the Restore tab shown in below Figure.

■Do Not Replace The File On My Computer: This option, the default, causes the Restore utility to skip files that are already in the target location. A common scenario leading to this choice is one in which some, but not all, files have been deleted from the restore location. This option will restore such missing files with the backed-up files.

■Replace The File On Disk Only If The File On Disk Is Older: This option directs the restore process to overwrite existing files unless those files are more recent than the files in the backup set. The theory is that if a file in the target location is more recent than the backed-up copy, it is possible that the newer file contains information that you do not want to overwrite.

■Always Replace The File On My Computer: Under this restore option, all files are overwritten by their backed-up versions, regardless of whether the file is more recent than the backup. You will lose data in files that were modified since the backup date. Any files in the target location that are not in the backup set will remain, however.

After selecting files to restore, restore options and a restore destination, click Start Restore, and then confirm the restore. The Start Restore dialog box appears

Before confirming the restore, you can configure how the restore operation will treat security settings on the backed-up files by clicking Advanced in the Confirm Restore dialog box and selecting the Restore Security option. If data was backed up from, and is being restored to, an NTFS volume, the default setting will restore permissions, audit settings, and ownership information. Deselecting this option will restore the data with-out its security descriptors, and all restored files will inherit the permissions of the target restore volume or folder.