Restoring Your Data With Point in Time

SpiderOak's backup products have a feature called Point in Time restoration. This allows you to restore a folder or set of files as they were at a specific point in the past. Ransomware can infect your files and overwrite them, but with point in time you can restore them as they were before the infection. Hard drive failures can be overcome by restoring to the time before the failure occurred. For Enterprise and Groups administrators, this allows restoring employee files, as well as files and folders that had been placed on purge hold.

Here is a simple guide to using point in time restoration to restore a folder.

STEP 1: LAUNCHING THE COMMAND LINE

The first thing you'll need to do is shut down the graphical version (GUI) of SpiderOak One or Groups if it is running. To do that, click or right click on the SpiderOak icon and select "Quit". The icon can be found in your operating system's menu bar, system tray, or notification area.

Next, access the Terminal or Command Prompt. On Windows, press the Windows key then type Command Prompt and select the Command Prompt app. On Mac type CMD+Space to launch Spotlight Search, then type Terminal and select the Terminal application. On Linux, use your distro's search function to launch the Terminal.

Point in time recovery is a command line feature of SpiderOak and is not available through the application interface. If you aren't familiar with using the command line this can sound intimidating, but any user can learn to use point in time restoration by copy and paste and dragging folders into the terminal.

STEP 2: FORMING THE COMMAND

The command to restore data to a point in time is made up of three parts. First, the path to the SpiderOak application needs to be stated. This tells the computer which application to use to run the command. Second, --restore tells the SpiderOak application which folder will be restored. Third, --point-in-time specifies the date the data will be restored to. An optional fourth part of the command, --output, tells SpiderOak where to download the data to. (If you don't use the output option, the data will be downloaded to your computer's default Downloads folder.)

The path to the SpiderOak application is different for SpiderOak One and SpiderOak Groups, and varies by operating system. Please note, these paths are case sensitive and must be typed exactly as they occur on the system. 

SpiderOak One:

• Windows: "C:\Program Files\SpiderOakONE\SpiderOakONE.exe"
• macOS: /Applications/SpiderOakONE.app/Contents/MacOS/SpiderOakONE
• Linux: /usr/bin/SpiderOakONE (You can also directly specify SpiderOakONE)

SpiderOak Groups / Enterprise:

• Windows: "C:\Program Files\SpiderOak Groups\SpiderOakGroups.exe"
• macOS: /Applications/SpiderOakGroups.app/Contents/MacOS/SpiderOakGroups
• Linux: /usr/bin/SpiderOakGroups (You can also directly specify SpiderOakGroups)

Here's an example of a command that would run on a Linux computer:

SpiderOakONE --restore /home/adam/Documents/ --point-in-time 2017-01-25/11:30

This will download the Documents folder in the state it was in on 2017-01-25 at 11:30 am.

Here's an example of a command that would run on a Mac computer:

/Applications/SpiderOakONE.app/Contents/MacOS/SpiderOakONE --restore /home/adam/Documents/ --point-in-time 2017-01-25/11:30

This will download the Documents folder in the state it was in on 2017-01-25 at 11:30 am.

Here's an example of a command that would run on a Windows computer:

"C:\Program Files\SpiderOakONE\SpiderOakONE.exe" --restore C:\Users\Adam\Documents --point-in-time 2017-01-25/11:30

This will download the Documents folder in the state it was in on 2017-01-25 at 11:30 am.

When determining the time for the above commands, it is important to note that it is the local time of the user. 

ADDITIONAL OPTIONS

If you have command line experience or would simply like to explore the full range of options that point in time restore offers, you can add the following modifiers to your command:

• --output /TARGET/LOCATION specifies where to download the directory to. If not specified, it will be downloaded to the default download directory.
• --device N specifies the device number (not name) to download the directory from. If not specified, the directory will be downloaded from the current device.
• --verbose will specify the files being downloaded.
• --simulate will report what files would be downloaded, but will not actually download anything. By its nature this command is verbose, so there is no need to specify verbose when --simulate is used.

The Simulate modifier is especially useful as it allows you to see what will be downloaded when running the command without actually downloading the files.

RESOURCES AND DOCUMENTATION

For further information please see our documentation on using SpiderOak One from the command line and command line options for the Groups application.

For further technical documentation on using the --point-in-time command, please see the SpiderOak One FAQ and the SpiderOak Groups FAQ. Don't hesitate to reach out to our support team with any further questions!