How can I get back my files?
I have been using ATI Home 2010 for almost 7 years, backing up my disks once a week.
Now I need to retrieve some files I have lost and it turned out to be impossible.
First it is difficult to find the files because the date format is ddmmyyyy. Next my c-drive with the operating system, Win 7 Ultimate, is dynamic and therefore the files cannot be read
Can somebody tell me what to do?
My backup files looks like this:
and no matter whether I db-click or rightclick and choose open, I get this:
sorry, I can't insert the pics into this comment.
Please download the ATIH 2010 User Guide PDF document then see:
10.4 Recovering files and folders
Depending on the backup types you have used, there may be several methods of recovering files and
folders. In most cases you recover files and folders in Windows. You can recover files and folders
from a file backup archive and from a disk/partition image as well. To recover files/folders from an
image, you can mount the image (see Mounting an image (p. 134)) and copy files/folders to a desired
location using Windows Explorer.
If you need to recover just a single file/folder or a few files, double-click on the required image
backup archive. Then drill-down to the folder containing the file(s) you need to recover, select the
file(s), right-click and choose Copy in the shortcut menu, open a folder for saving the files to be
recovered, right-click in the folder and choose Paste in the shortcut menu. You can also drag the files
from the backup archive into the destination folder. This method can also be used in case of My Data
type backup archives.
One more method of recovering files/folders from an image is described below. See Recovering files
and folders from image archives (p. 90).
10.4.1 Recovering files and folders from file archives
This section describes how to recover files and folders from a file backup archive.
1. Start the Recovery Wizard by selecting Recovery → File Recovery in the main program menu.
2. Select the archive.
Data recovery directly from an FTP server requires the archive to consist of files of no more than 2GB. If you
suspect that some of the files are larger, first copy the entire archive (along with the initial full backup) to a
local hard disk or a network share disk. See notes and recommendations for supporting FTP servers in
Supported storage media (p. 14).
***
Please note that before recovering Microsoft Outlook mail messages, accounts, contacts, settings, etc. from
My E-mail backup on a new computer with a newly installed Microsoft Outlook, you should launch Outlook
at least once. If Microsoft Outlook is launched for the first time after recovering the E-mail information, it
may malfunction.
If you use Microsoft Outlook Express and recover its mail folders, accounts, etc. from My E-mail backup on
another PC or after performing a so called "clean install" of Microsoft Windows, please, do not forget to
switch to your identity after recovery by selecting File → Switch Identity in Outlook Express and then
double-clicking on your identity in the list of the dialog box.
3. If you are going to recover files from an archive containing incremental backups, Acronis True
Image Home will enable selecting one of the successive incremental backups by its creation
date/time. Thus, you can roll back the files/folders state to a certain date.
90 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
To recover data from an incremental backup, you must have all the previous backup files and the initial full
backup. If any of the successive backups are missing, recovery is not possible.
To recover data from a differential backup, you must have the initial full backup as well.
4. Select a folder on your computer where you want to recover selected files/folders (a target
folder). You can recover data to its original location or choose a new one, if necessary. Choosing
a new location results in appearance of one more required step, namely, Destination.
When you choose a new location, by default the selected items will be recovered without
recovering the original, absolute path. You may also wish to recover the items with their entire
folder hierarchy. If this is the case, select Recover absolute path.
At the Destination step select a new location on the directory tree. You can create a new folder
for the files to be recovered to by clicking Create new folder.
5. At the What to recover step select the files and folders to recover. You can choose to recover all
data or browse the archive contents and select the desired folders or files. Clicking Next will
bring you to the Finish step. Click Proceed if you do not need to change the default recovery
options, otherwise click Options.
6. The first optional step allows you to keep useful data changes made since the selected backup
was created. Choose what to do if the program finds in the destination folder a file with the same
name as in the archive. By default, the program will overwrite existing files and folders, though
more recent files and folders are protected from overwriting. If necessary, you can protect the
system, hidden files and folders from being overwritten by selecting the appropriate check
boxes.
In addition, you can protect the files that meet the criteria you specify in this window from being
overwritten.
Unselecting the Overwrite existing files check box will give the files on the hard disk
unconditional priority over the archived files.
7. Select the options for the recovery process (that is, recovery process priority, file-level security
settings, etc.). The options you set on this page will be applied only to the current recovery task.
8. Up to this point, you can make changes in the created task by choosing the step you want to
change and editing its settings. Clicking Proceed will launch the task execution.
9. The task progress will be shown in a special window. You can stop the procedure by clicking
Cancel. Please keep in mind that the aborted procedure may still cause changes in the
destination folder.
10.4.2 Recovering files and folders from image archives
Image archives provide recovery of not only entire disks/partitions, but files/folders too.
1. Start the Recovery Wizard by selecting Recovery → Disk and Partition Recovery in the main
program menu.
2. Select the archive.
Data recovery directly from an FTP server requires the archive to consist of files of no more than 2GB. If you
suspect that some of the files are larger, first copy the entire archive (along with the initial full backup) to a
local hard disk or a network share disk. See notes and recommendations for supporting FTP servers in
Supported storage media (p. 14).
3. If you are going to recover files from an archive containing incremental backups, Acronis True
Image Home will enable selecting one of the successive incremental backups by its creation
date/time. Thus, you can roll back the file/folder state to a certain date.
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010 91
To recover data from an incremental backup, you must have all the previous backup files and the initial full
backup. If any of the successive backups are missing, recovery is not possible.
To recover data from a differential backup, you must have the initial full backup as well.
4. At the Recovery method step select Recover chosen files and folders.
5. Select where you want to recover the chosen files/folders. You can recover data to its original
location or choose a new one, if necessary.
When recovering files/folders under bootable rescue media, the Original location option is disabled,
because drive letters in standalone Acronis True Image Home might differ from the way Windows identifies
drives.
Choosing a new location results in appearance of one more required step, namely, Destination.
When you choose a new location, by default the selected items will be recovered without
recovering the original, absolute path. You may also wish to recover the items with their entire
folder hierarchy. If this is the case, select Recover absolute path.
At the Destination step select a new location on the directory tree. You can create a new folder
for the files to be recovered by clicking Create new folder.
6. Select the files and folders to recover. Make sure that you unselect all unnecessary folders.
Otherwise you will recover a lot of excess files.
7. The first optional step allows you to keep useful data changes made since the selected backup
was created. Choose what to do if the program finds a file in the destination folder with the same
name as in the archive. By default, the program will overwrite existing files and folders, though
more recent files and folders are protected from being overwritten. If necessary, you can protect
the system, hidden files and folders from being overwritten by selecting the appropriate check
boxes.
In addition, you can protect the files that meet the criteria you specify in this window from being
overwritten.
Unselecting the Overwrite existing files checkbox will give the files on the hard disk
unconditional priority over the archived files.
8. Select the options for the recovery process (that is, recovery process priority, file-level security
settings, etc.). The options you set on this page will be applied only to the current recovery task.
9. Up to this point, you can make changes in the created task by choosing the step you want to
change and editing its settings. Clicking Proceed will launch the task execution.
10. The task progress will be shown in a special window. You can stop the procedure by clicking
Cancel. Please keep in mind that the aborted procedure may still cause changes in the
destination folder(s).
17 Exploring archives and mounting images
Acronis True Image Home offers two kinds of archive contents management: mounting for images
and exploring for both images and file-level archives.
Exploring images and file-level archives lets you view their contents and copy the selected files to a
hard disk. To explore a backup archive, double-click on the corresponding tib file. You can also right-
click on the file and choose Explore in the shortcut menu.
When you copy files from a backup being explored, the copied files lose the "Compressed" and "Encrypted"
attribute. If you need to keep these attributes, it is recommended to recover the backup.
Mounting images as virtual drives lets you access them as though they were physical drives. Such
ability means that:
a new disk with its own letter will appear in the drives list
using Windows Explorer and other file managers, you can view the image contents as if they
were located on a physical disk or partition
you will be able to use the virtual disk in the same way as the real one: open, save, copy, move,
create, delete files or folders. If necessary, the image can be mounted in read-only mode.
The operations described in this chapter are supported only for the FAT and NTFS file systems.
Please keep in mind that, though both file archives and disk/partition images have a default ".tib"
extension, only images can be mounted. If you want to view file archive contents, use the Explore
operation. The following is a brief summary of the Explore vs Mount operation:
Explore Mount
Archive type File-level, disk or partition image Partition image
Assigning a letter No Yes
Archive modification No Yes (in R/W mode)
File extraction Yes Yes
17.1 Mounting an image
1. Start the Mount Wizard by selecting Tools & Utilities → Mount Image in the main program
menu or by right-clicking on an image archive on the Data recovery and backup management
screen and selecting Mount Image in the shortcut menu.
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010 135
2. Select the archive for mounting.
If you selected an archive containing incremental images, you can select one of the successive
incremental images (also called "slices") by its creation date/time. Thus, you can explore the data
state at a certain moment.
To mount an incremental image, you must have all previous images and the initial full image. If
any of the successive images are missing, mounting is not possible. By default the program will
mount the latest incremental image
To mount a differential image, you must have the initial full image as well.
If the archive was password-protected, Acronis True Image Home will ask for the password in a
dialog box. Neither the partitions layout will be shown, nor will the Next button be enabled until
you enter the correct password.
136 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
3. Select a partition to mount as a virtual disk. (Note that you cannot mount an image of the entire
disk except in the case when the disk consists of one partition). If the image contains several
partitions, by default all of them will be selected for mounting with automatically assigned drive
letters. If you would like to assign different drive letters to the partitions to be mounted, click
Options.
You can also select a letter to be assigned to the virtual disk from the Mount letter drop-down
list. If you do not want to mount a partition, select Do not mount in the list or unselect the
partition's checkbox.
4. If you select the Mount the partitions in the read-write mode box, the program assumes that
the mounted image will be modified and creates an incremental archive file to capture the
changes. It is strongly recommended that you list the forthcoming changes in the Comments
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010 137
section to this file. For you to be able to make comments, the optional Comments step appears
in the wizard.
5. Having finished the settings, click Proceed to connect the selected partition images as virtual
disks.
6. After the image is connected, the program will run Windows Explorer, showing its contents. Now
you can work with files or folders as if they were located on a real disk.