Please remember to connect the external drive you dedicated for backups before launching the program!
You can restore items both from file backups and disk image backups in EaseUS Todo Backup Free.
If you have not yet opened the backup program, minimize all open windows using keyboard shortcut Windows Key+M and double-click the EaseUS Todo Backup Free icon on Desktop.
In Windows Vista, 7 and 8, this will wake User Account Control. Click Continue or Yes.
Restoring files and folders from daily file backups
In Home tab, click File Recovery.
In the Select an image in the list to recover screen, click to select your daily documents backup task/plan.
If you do not see anything listed here, use the Browse button to find and select the backup.
Click Next to continue.
In case you get the error message stating "The image file is incomplete, refer to troubleshooting in Help", your external drive is not connected or has a different drive letter. Connect the drive or use the Browse button to locate the backup.
If you encrypted your backups, type the password for the backup (not your Windows password!) and click OK.
In the Select a backup time point screen, select the backup image you want to restore files or folders from. Then click Next.
In the Select recovery method screen, you have three different options for restoring files or folders:
- If you know exactly where the file or folder you need to restore was, use the first option - Recover specific files. Then expand the backup, browse to the file or folder location and select the items to restore.
- If you want to restore all files of certain type (extension), such as only MP3, AVI or DOC files, use the Recover files by type option to add file extensions.
- If you do not know where the file was, but you know at least a part of its name, use the third option - Search files to recover.
Here's an example of recovering specific folders:
Here's an example of searching for files to recover. Enter full file name or part of name and click Find. To search using only a part of file name, add asterisks (*) to the beginning and the end of search term.
Please note that in Windows Vista, 7 and 8, EaseUS Todo Backup Free might display double results for files in Documents folders - first as a file in Documents folder, second as a file in My Documents folder. This is because there is a link (junction) named My Documents that points to Documents folder - Microsoft created this to maintain backwards compatibility with Windows XP. It does not matter which one you choose to restore here, but restoring both is certainly not a good idea.
After selecting files or folders to restore, click Next to move on to the Select recovery location screen.
In most cases, it is recommended to put restored files in a new folder to prevent accidental overwrites. Select Specify a recovery location, click My Documents folder and then type a name in the Create new folder field and click Create.
If you are sure you are not overwriting anything important, you can select the Recover to original location option instead. If the folder and contents you need to restore are already in the original location, but you want to replace these with files from the backup, activate the Replace existing files check box, too.
After making your selections, click Next to move on to the Recovery information screen.
Click Proceed to start the restoration process.
The recovery might take some time, depending on the number and size of files and folders selected. Click Finish after it is complete.
Restoring files and folders from weekly disk image backups
In case you have required files or folders on a disk image backup, EaseUS Todo Backup Free provides the ability to mount backup images and restore needed items from there.
Do not use this option for recovering whole computer because this will not work properly! You need to boot from Emergency Disk as described in the Disk and partition recovery article to restore a PC.
If you have encrypted your hard disks or partitions using tools like TrueCrypt, you cannot restore individual files or folders from disk image backups, because the backups have been created on sector-to-sector basis. You can only restore whole disks or partitions using the bootable Emergency Disk.
In Home tab, click Mount/Unmount in the Tools section.
In the Select a mounted image to unmount or click Mount to mount a backup image screen, click Mount.
In the Select a backup image to mount screen, browse to your external drive and select a disk image backup. Do not select daily file backup files here, just disk images are supported!
Click Next.
If you encrypted your backups, type the password for the backup (not your Windows password!) and click OK.
In the Select a time point of backup image to mount screen, click the needed one and then click Next.
EaseUS Todo Backup Free automatically detects the first available drive letters, so just select the drives you want to mount and click Next in the Assign drive letter screen. Please note that most Windows Vista, 7 and 8 installations have a special recovery partition that is around 100-350 MB (megabytes) of size - you do not need to mount that partition.
Alternatively, you can click the down arrow to the right of a drive letter in Disk/Partition column to specify your own drive letter.
Click Proceed in the Mount image information screen to open the disk image backup as a separate drive.
If Windows Explorer does not open automatically, use keyboard shortcut Windows Key+E to open it and navigate to the mounted disk.
You can use the disk as any other hard disk now. Find and copy the files and folders you need to restore. Creating, modifying, moving and deleting files on the mounted image is not possible for security reasons.
After you've completed restoring, you should unmount the image. Close all Windows Explorer windows before this!
Open Home tab and click Mount/Unmount in Tools section again.
In the familiar Select a mounted image to unmount or click Mount to mount a backup image screen, click to select a mounted disk image backup. Then click Unmount.
That's it!
