Restoring using SyncBack without profiles

Question

I backed up my internal hard drive (C:) using SyncBack onto an external (USB) hard drive with maximum compression. I then performed a clean install of Windows Vista onto the computer.

I forgot to copy the SyncBack logs before the clean install. And now when ever I try to restore a directory, the RAR/ZIP files are copied to the system hard drive instead of extracting their contents to the hard drive. Also, SyncBack is not traversing the folders during the Restore process.

How can I tell SyncBack to expand the compressed files?

I am running the freeware version of SyncBack. I have to create new log files (unless SyncBack put them somewhere on the external drive).

My alternative is to write a program that traverses the folders on the external drive and extracts files from the RAR/ZIP files.

I am using Windows Vista, Service Pack 2, and the data size prior to backup was about 200 GB. (The backup process took over 72 hours due to "hiccups").

Answer 1

Hi, re-create your profile with the source as your C: drive, and the destination is the folder where your Zip files are. Make sure the profile is set to use compression (with each file compressed to its own file). Then simply run the profile as a Restore. I'd recommend running a Simulated Restore first to see what will happen without any files being replaced.

Answer 2

The answer I chose is to write a Java program that traverses directories on the backup drive and recreates them on the original drive. Any non-directory files are unzipped to the source drive.

Java has utilities for unzipping files.