Seagate Backup drive won't 'fully' restore all files at once. Looking to buy recovery software for it.

[Harwy]

I bought a Seagate Backup Plus drive and it works perfectly fine its just I'm having issues figuring out how to fully restore all my files at once.

Using the program it came with it, the drive does its thing and starts up to restore my files. When it is done it will say that only a small amount was restored. For example, right before the progress bar is finished it will say 270,000 out of 288,000 files are being restored but when it is finished it will say that only 2,000 files out of the 288,000 were restored.

The way the drive restores them is by the day. https://imgur.com/wowt5Ne I've downloaded different toolkits from Seagates and have had very little luck with any of them.

The files cannot be accessed any other way except by restoring the contents for that particular day. However no matter the day the progress bar will say that it has over 280,000 files to restore and yet it say that only a small amount was restored when it finished. I have not figured out a way to restore them all at once instead I have to manually restore them by the days in which the drive backed them up which was every two days for the past six months.

Since restoring any of the files by the day take a large amount of time I thought it would be much easier and faster to just buy a disk recovery software. The drive is not corrupted and working fine, I was just wondering which software would be the best for this case.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm not a fan of the proprietary drive backup software and routines.

I use Macrium Reflect for my backup routine. Works very well to back up on an automated schedule, and recovery of whole drives or individual files is easy.

I had to recover a full drive backup just a couple of days ago. One of my secondary SSD's died.
Put in a new drive, fire up Macrium, click click...605GB recovered 100%, in 2 hours.

Read here for my personal routine:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html


What is happening that you tried this Recovery?

 

[Harwy]

I'll have to look into Macrium Reflect after I recover my files, thanks for the suggestion.

So everything is normal when I start up and start the recovery process.
https://imgur.com/PiRf6oT

As you can see it says that over 3000 files were recovered and then continues to climb upward but when it is done it will then say that 2300 files were restored.
https://imgur.com/GuUHZCi

Though I still don't know which recovery software to get.

 

[Harwy]

I'm still looking for info about which recovery software to use for this particular situation.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm still looking for info about which recovery software to use for this particular situation.

I think you should talk to Seagate about this. It's their software and drive.

 

[Harwy]

I will, however, I have to call a telephone number and have not been able to find an e-mail on their website.
With the holiday season, I've had no time off during the weekdays to be able to do so and just figured it would be much faster to look for a recovery program.

 

[misar]

The Seagate software does incremental backups of data files only. Each daily backup has a complete list of all files but only holds copies of files which are different from the previous backups.

If you still have the data on your PC it will only restore files which are missing or different since the last backup. If there is no data on the PC (eg you did a clean install of Windows) it will restore everything from all the incremental backups. Unless you deleted some of the older daily backups after making the last one.

Either way that could explain your 2000 files.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Harwy, you may visit this site and create a ticket and the rest will be done via email.

 

[Harwy]

So the HDD that had all my data is gone. A new version of windows was installed.
All the data is still on the back-up drive and i have not deleted anything.
I also have a completely new HDD that I am trying to restore the data on but again it won't restore everything.

Also thank you for the link, after work i will submit a ticket for my issue

 

[USAFRet]

One of the prime considerations of any backup routine or tool is to test it before you need it.
See exactly how it is supposed to work, and what gotchas there might be.

 

[Harwy]

A hard lesson that I am learning right now, unfortunately.

 

[misar]

This is probably a silly question but have you looked at the Seagate drive with File Explorer to see what is there?

Seagate use a complicated system of folders with strange names for navigation by their dashboard software but all your files should be clearly visible in those folders with their original filenames, dates,etc.

You should be able to recognise if the files you expect are there. If they are you can simply copy them to another disk. More laborious than using their software and there will be multiple copies of files you edited - you want the most recent copy.

 

[misar]

To save you time:

Seagate Dashboard stores your backed up data in the Seagate Dashboard 2.0 folder. There is a specific structure within that folder and the following will walk you through it.

Here is an example of the structure:
X:\Seagate Dashboard 2.0\computersname\username\Backup\xxxxxxxx-xxxx\0515_###_username
X: - The drive letter assigned to the Backup Plus drive.
Seagate Dashboard 2.0 - The main folder for Dashboard backups.
computername - The name of the computer that was backed up.
username - The name of the user that installed the Dashboard software and ran the backup.
xxxxxxxx-xxxx - The alphanumeric string assigned to an individual backup job. If you created more than one backup job, you will have several folders.
515_###_username - A time-stamped folder created for each version of the backup. Each backup will contain any new or modified files that were copied during a specific period. This can become fairly complex to navigate, which is why using the restore feature of the software is the recommended method of restoring files.

 

[misar]

And finally ...

I just looked at their description of restoring backups. It states specifically that you need to restore files individually from each daily (etc) backup. So it looks like what you described in your first post is the way the software works.

Guess you should have read the manual before wiping your HDD.

 

[Harwy]

This is probably a silly question but have you looked at the Seagate drive with File Explorer to see what is there?

Seagate use a complicated system of folders with strange names for navigation by their dashboard software but all your files should be clearly visible in those folders with their original filenames, dates,etc.

You should be able to recognise if the files you expect are there. If they are you can simply copy them to another disk. More laborious than using their software and there will be multiple copies of files you edited - you want the most recent copy.

And finally ...

I just looked at their description of restoring backups. It states specifically that you need to restore files individually from each daily (etc) backup. So it looks like what you described in your first post is the way the software works.

Guess you should have read the manual before wiping your HDD.

Thank you so much for all the info, yeah I really should have read the manual... I'm stupid.

I also failed to clarify that my HDD crashed and failed it was getting kinda old.
Anyways I've tried the method you mentioned above but it doesn't seem to be working as instead of using the 'Seagate Dashboard' it uses the 'ToolKit' program instead so that file path you mentioned is not there. Another thing to note is that 'Seagate Dashboard' can't find any backup plan created by 'Toolkit' so a backup plan created by another Seagate program is not interchangeable with any other.

After getting all my files back I'm just going to be using the program USAFRet mentioned.

Also, thank you to all who tried to help as well.

 

[misar]

Where can I find my backup files?

To locate files that have been backed up depends on the software that was used.The following is a list of backup applications that come with Seagate / Maxtor-brand products and where on the external drive the data is stored.

Toolkit:
Open (My) Computer/This PC
Open the Backup Plus drive
Open the Toolkit folder
Open the Backup folder
Open the folder that is named after the computer that was backed up.
Open the C folder
Open the Users folder
Open the User folder
The data should be located within the User folder.

I have to say that you don't try very hard to help yourself.

 

[Harwy]

Where can I find my backup files?

To locate files that have been backed up depends on the software that was used.The following is a list of backup applications that come with Seagate / Maxtor-brand products and where on the external drive the data is stored.

Toolkit:
Open (My) Computer/This PC
Open the Backup Plus drive
Open the Toolkit folder
Open the Backup folder
Open the folder that is named after the computer that was backed up.
Open the C folder
Open the Users folder
Open the User folder
The data should be located within the User folder.

I have to say that you don't try very hard to help yourself.

It was my misunderstanding as I thought you were talking about something completely different that could only be utilized by Seagate dashboard.
The location inside toolkit was the first place I checked after my supposed 'issue'.(Really should have read the manual.)
So there are two sets of folders. One called 'Toolkit' and another called 'Seagate set up'
In 'Seagate set up' it has all the files from when I first back it up were there and 'Toolkit' has the latest backup though I did notice that some files were missing.
I was under the assumption the whole time that the program would simply bring back everything at once which is why I sought help when it was only saying parts of it were being restored, which again, should have really read the manual.