How to restore from HBS 3 with data backed up to the cloud

[shooms99]

I have about 0.5 TB of data on my QNAP backed up to the cloud (Backblaze B2, specifically). Unfortunately, my QNAP is currently down (power problem, unrelated to the QNAP itself). In trying to use the QuDedup Tool, it allows me to select a .QDFF file/folder, but doesn't allow me to connect to the cloud directly (Backblaze, for example). I can, of course, directly download my entire cloud contents to a local desktop and run QuDedup, but if I only need 2 or 3 small Word or PDF files, it would be expensive and time-consuming for a few tiny files. Am I missing something, or is there any other way to restore a few of my files, short of purchasing another QNAP?

[cuibonobo]

I have the same issue. My files are safely on BackBlaze B2 and I see the .qdff folder in the bucket, but downloading the entire thing (2 TB) would be a waste in order to select and restore individual files. A way to browse .qdff folders in the cloud would be ideal.

[cuibonobo]

I found a way to load .qdff files from the cloud using rclone! You will need 3 separate pieces of software (these are all for Windows):

• WinSFP: This allows you to mount arbitrary network locations as a drive letter
• rclone: This allows you to browse cloud storage locations in your file explorer
• QuDedup Extract Tool: The utility provided by QNAP to read .qdff backup folders

Once you have all of that installed:

• Use PowerShell or CMD.exe to navigate to the folder where you extracted rclone.exe.
• Run .\rclone.exe rcd --rc-web-gui in order to run the web GUI for rclone. A browser window with the rclone dashboard should open automatically.

  Code: Select all

  .\rclone.exe rcd --rc-web-gui

• Navigate to Configs in the rclone dashboard and create an new configuration for the cloud service of your choice. You may want to set this up with read-only keys for your cloud service so you don't accidentally edit data.
• [Optional] Ensure that you can browse your cloud files on the Explorer tab.
• Navigate to the Mounts section of the rclone dashboard and create a new mount. For the Fs option select the configuration for your cloud service and click the Open button. For the Mount Point option, type an empty drive letter and a colon. For example, if my X drive is free I would type X:
• [Optional] Ensure that you can browse your cloud files in the new drive letter in Windows File Explorer.
• Open the QuDedup Extract Tool and browse to the .qdff folder in the newly-mounted drive letter. From here you will be able to browse your backup and extract individual files.

Once you have finished getting the files you need, close the QuDedup Extract Tool, unmount the drive letter, and quit rclone.

[shooms99]

Great find. I tried it, and the downloads are a little slow, but it works. I was able to download 40MB of photos, took 4 minutes. Backblaze B2, however, said I used 546MB of bandwidth to download the 40MB of files. This excludes any mounting bandwidth required to search for your files and folders inside QuDedup. I guess this is fine for smaller files, but if you need large files restored, it might be easier to just use B2 itself to download then directly use QuDedup.

[shooms99]

BTW, QuDedup wasn't able to access a newly created "F:" drive, but when I had it mount to a non-existent C:\ folder, it worked fine (as a symlink?)

[cuibonobo]

Yeah, QuDedup still needs to download your database files, which can often be quite large. Also, your smaller file might still be part of a larger archive that it needs to download first, decompress, etc., which is why you see that larger bandwidth. Since my entire .qdff folder is 2TB it was still worth it for me to mount it remotely with this method.