How to restore Windows guest files from Proxmox Backup Server?

carsten2

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Mar 25, 2017
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How to restore Windows guest files from a backup of the proxmox backupserver? I have a Windows Server VM with 1 TB of data in NTFS and want to restore for example a deleted or corrupted file from the Proxmox Backup Server? How to do this? Is there a possibility to mount the Backup as drive?
 
This is not possible right now without some manual steps but is a feature that is actively being worked on.
 
What you can currently do:
  • Restore the Machine as a second VM (aka click on datastore->contents->choose backup-> restore and dont hit the backup tab in the vm which would replace the VM) and make sure it is stopped.
  • Follow the instructions on this page to move the drive to your old machine according to the storage type you are currently using: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Moving_disk_image_from_one_KVM_machine_to_another
 
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but be aware that for windows file systems there are some limitations - e.g. NTFS deduplication is not (properly) supported because the Linux NTFS driver doesn't understand that. for such cases, you can map a backup snapshot and attach it to a windows VM (read-only) and extract things manually inside that VM.
 
If you select that backup on a current Proxmox VE installation, you should see a "File Restore" button. With that, you can download the files you need to your local machine.
If you want to mount a disk from a backup directly, checkout the proxmox-backup-client map command: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/command-syntax.html#proxmox-backup-client

That page is basically useless. Gives no example of how to actually use the command to mount the disk from the backup image.
 
That page is basically useless. Gives no example of how to actually use the command to mount the disk from the backup image.
it's broken atm in the online version - please check "man proxmox-backup-client" locally on your system!
 

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