My first disaster

[kdonn]

Machine A has been backing up to Hard Drive #1 (HD1). Machine A is now no longer functioning. I want to restore files from HD1 to Machine B, which has its own Duplicacy install. I’m a light Duplicacy user. I haven’t done many restores from Duplicacy. I have no experience with the CLI. I’ve never done a restore from a Hard Drive that isn’t already known to Duplicacy. And I’m basically terrified of screwing this up.

I’d prefer to use the GUI if possible, but I’ll take what I can get at this point. I gather I need to make the storage known to Duplicacy. Can I do this from the GUI using “add a new storage”? It wants to do an init, but it’s difficult to get myself comfortable that this won’t erase all my backups. The storage is encrypted, but I do have the key.

Basically if I can get the first few steps of this operation, preferably in the GUI, I’d be most thankful.

[saspus]

Correct. You just need to add your existing storage to your new duplicacy instance using the same snapshot ID and encryption password if any. You can look up snapshot id in the snapshots folder on the storage.

Duplicacy will figure that this storage is already initialize and will just import it.

Relevant discussion here:

How do I back up my Duplicacy install? (Or move my Duplicacy install to another machine)

You follow exact same steps you have added this storage initially. Only this time, duplicacy will find config file on the target and instead of initializing a new repository will import existing. If you forget the path to the duplicacy data folder – look in your target storage using other tools, like web interface, or CyberDuck, or Transmit, etc. You want the folder name that contains the config, file and chunks, snapshots, etc sub folders. Same idea here – add the backup task exactly the sa…

Generally, always test restore after you’ve setup backup. Unless you actually test and make sure it works — you can’t really trust it.

[kdonn]

This all worked great. It restored a million files in under three hours without a hiccup. And yes, on the test restore, you’re preaching to the choir, but sometimes the choir comes in Sunday morning with a hangover. I have actually done restores, just not to another machine.

For whatever it’s worth, I’ve been using Duplicati for years and found it to be unreliable. Sometimes it works great for years, but then will inexplicably and silently fail. On other machines, it never works well right from the beginning. I switched to Duplicacy on a couple machines, and it has never presented any problems at all. It seems really tight and well worth the cost.

Also, thanks for the quick support reply.