Restoring Data

Breeze supports several restore methods depending on what you need to recover — from a single file to a complete system.

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Browsing Snapshots

Before restoring, you can inspect what a snapshot contains:

1. Go to Backup > Device Backup.
2. Find the device in the job list or device backup tab.
3. Open the Snapshot Browser and select a snapshot from the dropdown.
4. Navigate the file tree — expand folders to see their contents, including file names, sizes, and modification dates.

Note

Non-file snapshots are badged by type in the browser — a system-state snapshot shows a System image badge in both the snapshot selector and the detail header, so you can tell it apart from a file backup at a glance.

A system_image snapshot taken by a v0.112.0 or later agent on Linux or Windows also carries a restorability verdict in the detail header: a green Bare-metal restorable badge, or an amber Not bare-metal restorable badge whose tooltip lists why (BIOS/MBR boot, LVM, LUKS, RAID, btrfs root, ZFS, multi-disk OS, or no layout captured). The verdict tells you whether breeze-backup rebuild can reproduce the machine’s disk from that snapshot; ordinary restores and bmr-recover are not affected by it. File-only and macOS snapshots show no badge.

Tip

Always browse a snapshot before restoring to confirm the files you need are present. This is especially useful when deciding between a full restore and a selective one.

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Restore Types

Type	What it recovers	When to use
Full restore	Everything in the snapshot	Replacing a failed drive or rebuilding a system
Selective restore	Individual files you choose (not folders — see below)	Recovering accidentally deleted files
Bare metal recovery	Files and/or OS state (registry or /etc, services, firewall, scheduled tasks, packages) onto a machine that reinstalls or boots its own OS — or, on Linux, a full disk rebuild from a whole-machine snapshot	Replacing a dead machine entirely. See Bare Metal Recovery

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Running a Restore

Full Restore

1. Open the Restore Wizard from a snapshot or device backup tab.
2. Select the snapshot to restore from.
3. Choose Full Restore.
4. Choose the destination:
   • Original location — despite the name, this does not restore files to their original paths. With no destination path set, the agent restores into a temporary directory on the device instead (under the system temp directory). To restore in place — overwriting the originals — choose Alternate path and type in the original root path yourself.
   • Alternate path — specify a directory (e.g., /var/restore or D:\Restored); files are written there preserving their relative structure.
5. Review the summary and click Restore. The restore always runs on the device that owns the snapshot — the wizard does not offer a way to target a different device (see Cross-Device Restore below).

Selective Restore

1. Open the Restore Wizard.
2. Select the snapshot.
3. Choose Selective Restore.
4. Browse the file tree and check the boxes next to the individual files you want to recover. Selection is per-file — checking a folder is not supported, and the API rejects a folder path submitted directly; select the files inside it instead.
5. Choose the destination path (the same “Original location” caveat above applies).
6. Review and click Restore.

Caution

Selective restore currently matches files by path prefix, not by exact folder boundary. If you select /home/alice, a sibling folder like /home/alice2 or /home/alice-old is also included in the restore, since its path starts with the same characters. Review the file list carefully before confirming a selective restore of folders with similar names.

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Monitoring a Restore

After you start a restore, the job appears in restore history and on the target device’s Backup tab. You can track it from:

• The Backup dashboard’s Recent Jobs section
• The target device’s Backup tab

Completed restore jobs show the final status, restored file count, restored byte count, and any structured warnings or errors reported by the agent.

If the target device is offline, Breeze rejects the restore request immediately instead of creating a pending restore that cannot run.

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Cross-Device Restore

The restore API (POST /backup/restore) accepts a target deviceId, so a snapshot can be restored to a different device than the one it was taken from — both devices must be in the same organization. This is API-only today: the Restore Wizard in the web UI never sends a deviceId, so any restore started from the wizard runs on the device that owns the snapshot. To restore to a different device, call the API directly with the target deviceId.

Cross-device restores also require the destination device to be online when you start the restore. If Breeze cannot queue the restore command, the restore job is marked failed with the dispatch error instead of remaining stuck in a pending state.

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What Is and Isn’t Preserved

• Preserved — file content byte-for-byte; on Linux and macOS, Unix mode permission bits and the original modification time (mtime) are reapplied to each restored file.
• Not preserved — symlinks are skipped entirely, both in the backup and on restore; empty directories are not recreated; setuid/setgid/sticky bits are dropped (only the base permission bits are restored).
• Open files. On Windows, files locked by running applications may fail to restore. Stop the relevant services first, or restore to an alternate path.

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Restore Considerations

• Destination path. See the “Original location” caveat above — an explicit destination path is the only way to control where files land, including restoring in place.
• Permissions. See “What Is and Isn’t Preserved” above. If restoring to a different device or OS, permissions may need adjustment regardless.
• Disk space. Ensure the target device has enough free space for the restore. The snapshot’s total size is shown in the Restore Wizard summary.