backup and recovery of hidden files
I am in the process of rebuilding my laptop. Before I started, I took a backup of my hard drive to an external hard drive. Now when I try to restor my outlook PST file, I cannot find it in the backup. I turned on the options to show hidden files and folder. Now I can see the c:\Users\Username\Local Setting folder but it is empty. I went back to some older backup and they have the same behavior.
What am I missing? I cannot believe that Acronis does not backup hidden files. Did I forget to set a flag on the backup? How can I get my pst back?
I was able to get an old copy of my missing pst from a copy of my HD. And I have moved my PST to a non hidden location. The greater concern is a backup software not backing up hiddne files by default when you tell it to do a full backup. Is this normal behavior for Acronis or do I have a setting set wrong?
What type of backup did you do? Hidden files would normally be included in an image backup.
I went to "Disk and partition backup", selected my external HD as the destination and hit backup now. I probably did not have hidden files displayed in my folder options when I created the backup. But that would be an extremely weak excuse for it to not back them up.
A disk and partition backup will backup all files, hidden or not.
When you say you couldn't find it in the backup, what process did you use to look for it?
In Windows, under folder options, turn on hidden files. In Acronis, select "Explore and recover" from the backup listed. Select the Files and folders tab. Navigate to c:\users\username\Application Data folder. The folder is empty. Shouldn't there be a bunch of files in here?
I did not try to do a full restore of my user directory or of the whole drive. Maybe restoring a non-hidden parent will restore all the hidden children and this is just a bug of the backup explorer window. But still, have trouble with that as an acceptable explanation.
When you turn off hiding Windows files and double click on the TIB file, can you navigate to the folder and see anything. What if you mount the TIB file?
Application Data is a JUNCTION. You need to browse the AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook folder.
JUNCTION points can't be browsed directly because they don't exist in the backup. You need to make sure you're browsing the path pointed to by the JUNCTION.
Thought I looked there but must not have because I found my PST and a whole bunch of other files. Glad it was my problem and not the software. Figured something that basic in backup should be working and would have been thouroughly tested by the user population by now.
Thanks for all the help.