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:

  1. Preparing for Disaster Recovery

    2.      Make sure the following items are available when needed for disaster recovery.

    1. All CD-RW/DVD/tapes with backup archives.
    2. A CD-R disc and a printout of instructions created from the Disaster Recovery CD image you prepared (optional, but recommended).
    3. Disks with repair information (optional, but recommended).

  2. Restart and try to repair your disk

    3.      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.

  3. Restore hard disk in an emergency

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

         If you have a Disaster Recovery CD, you can restore your hard disk without formatting it and installing Windows and all other software. Insert your Disaster Recovery CD and reboot. If your computer will not start from the CD, you may need to change the boot order settings of your computer's BIOS. (Refer to the computer's documentation to change its BIOS settings to allow it to boot from the CD drive.)

         The CD automatically starts BackupMe Recovery CD Console. This Console guides you through all steps to restore your computer. Use the instructions to restore your hard disk (The instructions are also saved on the root of the disc). If you were able to restore your hard disk with Disaster Recovery CD, go to paragraph 6.

         If you haven't a Disaster Recovery CD, you have to repartition and reformat your hard disk. 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!

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

  4. Re-Install Windows and BackupMe

    5.      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 BackupMe. Use your registration key to register BackupMe again.

  5. Restore your repair information

    6.      To start restore of your files you should to restore your Backup Sets and catalog files. Files with repair information contain all these items. That's why, you should use the Repair Wizard to restore them. Press Repair button 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, BackupMe 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. When the restore is finished, the Repair Wizard will be closed and you should see all your Backup Sets at the list of Backup Sets.

         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 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. Catalog files BackupMe uses catalog files to create a tree of backed up files. Select a Backup Set and press Restore button. You should see all your backed up files. If you don't see all or any of your backed up files, your should download catalog files from a backup media.

  6. Restore from backup
    7. Now you are ready to start restore of your files, but lets do some check-ins to be sure in that:

         Select a Backup Set with files you want to restore and press Restore button. A dialog box will appear. It contains the tree of all backed up files of the selected Backup Set (see image below).

         You have to select the files you want to restore (click on a checkmark near a file or a folder). If you want to restore all files and folders, do not select any files.

         If you can't find the files to restore, use Find... command.

         When all necessary files are selected, press Restore button to start the restore process. A Restore Wizard will appear. Walk through it without changing anything to restore the selected files to their original location.

  1. Restart the computer

    2.      After BackupMe is finished the restore process, exit BackupMe and restart the computer.

         Now your computer is ready to use.