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File recovery

What are filesystem snapshots

Every night at 00:10 a snapshot of all /user and /project filesystems. You can use those snapshots to retrieve data yourself. At all times seven daily and four weekly snapshot are retained. For example, if you deleted something on any given Wednesday, you will find a snapshot for Tuesday, Monday and every other prior day until Wednesday of the previous week. From that point onward you will find a weekly snapshot for each one of the prior four weeks.

How can I retrieve data from a snapshot under Linux?

  • The snapshots are stored in your home directory or project directory under the path .snapshot (note the dot before the directory name). There you will find subdirectories with dates for each snapshot. You can look for the day you need to retrieve data from. To retrieve the data you can use the following command (the -p option is necessary to preserve the attributes of the files)

cp -p .snapshot/daily.2021-11-21_0010/example .
- The snapshot directory only becomes visible once it is accessed, like with a change directory or a listing (i.e. cd /project/atlas/.snapshot or ls -l /project/ct/.snapshot)

How can I restore data from a snapshot under Windows?

The snapshots are stored in a directory .snapshots which is usually not visible. There you will find subdirectories with the dates of the available snapshots. To restore deleted data from there follow these steps:

  1. Type H:.snapshot in teh address bar of the Windows explorer
  2. Open de subfolder with the snapshot (for example: daily.2021-11-21_0010).
  3. Drag any files or folders from the snapshot subdirectory to the desired destination folder in the Windows explorer.

You can also restore previous versions of existing files with the following steps:

  1. Open the Properties window of a file or folder by right-clicking on it.
  2. In Properties select the Previous Versions tab.
  3. Retrieve a copy of your file or folder with Restore or make a copy of the old version to a new destination with Copy.