Restore files after a disaster

Restore files after a disaster
A set of instructions to get you recovered quickly and easily.

These instructions will help you to recover your computer after a disaster. Some of steps should be taken only in the event of serious trouble like a disastrofic data loss due a phosical hardware faulture. To back your computer in working order you should:

Restart and try to repair your disk

     Find the CD-ROM included with your computer or the emergency recovery disk. Restart the computer and start it from recovery disk or CD. When you computer has started from this disk or CD, run CheckDisk or other disk repair utility to examine your hard disk for problems.

     If you were able to repair all problems with your hard disk and no low-level problems are found, skip this step.

     If your hard disk still has some problems but some files were repaired and you can access them, it's the best time to make a complete (full) backup of these repaired files. Use a new backup media as a destination for this Backp Set and do not encrypt your backup archives. You may want to make 2 separate full backups of all repaired files. When you are sure you have a redundant backup of your repaired files, use "Repair Wizard" to save files with repair information on a floppy or removable disk. If finally you were able to fix all problems with your hard disk, skip the rest of this step.

     If you could not make any repair with the disk utilities or the hard disk still isn't accessible, you probably need to reformat it to prepare for restoration.

WARNING: Formating a hard disk destroys all data stored on the disk. If you are not sure, do not format the disk.

     You may need to repartition the disk if even disk volumes can't be accessed. You should re-create all disk volumes as they were before. Use "fdisk" or other similar disk utility, but be very careful because it will destroy all data on the disk too!

Re-Install Windows and 123Backup

If you have formated your hard disk during the previous step, you have to install new Windows operating system on your newly-formated hard disk. Restart the computer and install 123Backup. Use your registration key to register 123Backup again.

Restore your repair information

     To start restore of your files you should to restore your Backup Sets, encryption keys and catalog files. Files with repair information contain all these items. That's why, you should use the Repair Wizard to restore them. Choose Save/Restore repair information... command at the Program Settings to open the Repair Wizard. Select "I want to restore my configuration and encryption key" option and press the Next button.

     Select a storage with repair files. It can be any disk or FTP Server. Press the Next button to procced. If you restore your repair files from a disk, 123Backup will ask you to choose it and will find all repair files on it. You have to select one of them to restore.

     No matter what storage you use for your repair information, you will see the following page as on the image below. You have to check all items.

     Press the Finish button to restore the selected items. Now it's time to check that all necessary items were restored successfully and to do something if some of them were not restored due any reason.

Item name How to check What to do if I can't find the item

1. Backup Sets The list of Backup Sets (the first page of the Restore procedure) should show all your Backup Sets. If you don't see all or any of your Backup Sets, you should to re-create them manually. The most important part is to specify the same Backup Set description and destination.

2. Encryption keys All necessary encryption keys should be at the Encryption keys page of the Program Settings page. If you don't see all or any of your encryption keys, we can recommend you only one thing: try to restore the latest repair information. Without encryption keys, your won't be able to restore encrypted backup archives.

3. Catalog files 123Backup uses catalog files to create a tree of backed up files. Start Restore procedure and check if all backed up file exist. If you don't see all or any of your backed up files, your should download catalog files from backup media. Start Restore procedure and download catalog files.

Restore from backup

Now you are ready to start restore of your files, but lets do some check-ins to be sure in that:

Your hard disk and Windows operating system are working again.
123Backup is working too.
You see all your encryption keys at the "Settings" dialog box.

Start the Restore procedure and restore your files. After 123Backup is finished the restore process, exit 123Backup and restart the computer.

Now your computer is ready to use.

Item name	How to check	What to do if I can't find the item
1. Backup Sets	The list of Backup Sets (the first page of the Restore procedure) should show all your Backup Sets.	If you don't see all or any of your Backup Sets, you should to re-create them manually. The most important part is to specify the same Backup Set description and destination.
2. Encryption keys	All necessary encryption keys should be at the Encryption keys page of the Program Settings page.	If you don't see all or any of your encryption keys, we can recommend you only one thing: try to restore the latest repair information. Without encryption keys, your won't be able to restore encrypted backup archives.
3. Catalog files	123Backup uses catalog files to create a tree of backed up files. Start Restore procedure and check if all backed up file exist.	If you don't see all or any of your backed up files, your should download catalog files from backup media. Start Restore procedure and download catalog files.