Volume restore to external HDD

[stephen.aiken]

I am somewhat confused because the Veeam Agent for MS Windows User Guide says:

”A volume can be restored to its original location or new location. If you restore the volume to its original location, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows overwrites data on the original volume. If you restore the volume to a new location, and the target disk contains any data, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows overwrites data in the target location with data retrieved from the backup.”

This R&D forum thread https://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php ... 71&start=0 says that you cannot:
“It is indeed not possible to recover to an external drive. Volume restore can only be done to an internal drive so that is why it doesn't work.”

Can somebody please explain? For context, I was hoping to restore a backup of my secondary computer drive which is backed up to an external HDD to another external HDD to (1) test the Volume Restore functionality, and (2) get some screenshots for my own disaster recovery manual.

Thanks, Steve

[david.domask]

Hi Steve, welcome to the forums.

As the thread tells, currently this functionality is not available, and there hasn't been high demand for this request. Will count your request of course, but nothing in the immediate future for this.

As for your use-case, I would say consider testing with a VM, even the built-in Windows virtualization will be fine for making your test / documentation. (Similarly, you might just grab screenshots from our User Guide )

[stephen.aiken]

Thanks, David.

As for your use-case, I would say consider testing with a VM, even the built-in Windows virtualization will be fine for making your test / documentation. (Similarly, you might just grab screenshots from our User Guide )

I've used the User Guide quite a bit - very useful resource. I don't have a lot of experience with VMs to-date - is your suggestion to create a bootable VM on my C:\ drive and then point Veeam Agent to it as a volume restore? Does the User Guide or other Veeam documentation offer any guidance on this process? I do have Windows 10 Pro with Hyper-V Manager and sufficient C:\ drive space. I'd be looking to restore the computer's internal D:\ drive.

Thanks again,
Steve

[david.domask]

Just to be clear, you're wanting to protect the D:\ volume on the host? Or in a VM?

Basically the process itself doesn't differ, mostly it's networking, and my suggestion was just a suggestion for your desire to make a test restore, not for production use (though you certainly could protect a VM with Veeam Agent for Windows, just my suggestion was specifically at your use-case for making a test restore)

If a test is all you want, then a VM is fine, but if you want to use it normally to protect the host, then it must be on the host itself, not a VM running on the host.