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Bizarre Restore File/Folder Behavior involving Hardlinks
Hi all, been a long time referencer of sevenforums and tenforums, but never registered and posted until now.
So I've got a weird problem. I have an SSD and use an external HDD as my main storage for non-applications, to save room on the SSD, and today while going through some pictures to use for my Windows 10 lockscreen slideshow, I noticed everything in one particular folder had been deleted. Not sure of how this happened, I assume when I was organizing some pics before I'd accidentally deleted/moved them (I have a cat who loves to try and get on the keyboard for attention, who I have to stop and move, so it might've been during that) but I figure it's okay, because I can just restore them, as I have Windows do a nightly backup to a second external HDD.
The system's drive layout is like this:
Computer
-SSD (OS)
External drives
-Storage
-Backup
Windows does a nightly backup of files from both the OS drive and the storage drive, to the external backup drive. It doesn't do a system image (I don't have enough room on the backup drive for that) and it's using the Windows 7-style backup from my pre-Windows 10 upgrade because, frankly, I've read how Windows 10's File History feature basically sucks.
Bringing up the restore previous versions option on the folder shows multiple backups, but trying to restore it fails. It says the folder is already in use (it's not) and it can't access it. I tried multiple times, and closed all Explorer windows and made sure no program was accessing that folder, and it still gave an error.
Okay, so I click to manually open the backups and browse, and the folder I'm trying to restore is showing as empty, like on the live drive, except for one file I'd just put into the live folder. As if it was showing the live one and not the backup. I check all the backups, and they're all the same. I test this by creating a new folder on the storage drive and see it instantly appear in the backups. All of them. So Windows is showing the live folders, rather than the actual backups.
I think the problem is that I use Link Shell Extension to create hardlinks between certain folders on the OS and the storage drives, so I can access them and move them around like they were on the same drive. Previously on Windows 7 this wasn't an issue. Files got backed up no problem, and they were accessible and restorable when using the restore previous versions option. However I think Windows 10 is tripping up on them. It seems to back the folders up like normal, as the space used on the backup drive matches the space required for everything it backs up, but accessing them sends Windows 10 into a circle with itself. Some of the backed-up folders are hardlinks, and because Windows backed up those folders, it's treating them like normal, and accessing the storage drive rather than showing the actual backups for them.
Any idea on how to access the backups and pull the files out? I've tried a third-party program for exploring backups, but it hits the same problem. I tried turning off the storage drive and accessing the backups on the backup drive, and it just says it can't find the folders because it's still trying to access the storage drive due to the hardlink. I'm thinking of using a USB-bootable Linux distro to see if I can get past it, but I don't know if I'm going to have the same problem there.
Windows version is 21H1 (190.43.1415.)
Thank you for any help in advance. It's appreciated.
- - - Updated - - -
And after that huge post, I continue trying to access the backed-up files and succeeded. By simply right-clicking the actual Windows backup directory file on the backup drive, and selecting Restore Options, then Restore my files from this backup, then navigating to the folder in the backup, and it bypassed the hardlink issue and listed all of the files. Selected them all, clicked Next, chose the restore destination, and it restored them. It's like the front and back door approaches didn't work, but the side door one did.
Now I'm going to find a backup solution that can properly handle hardlinks like Windows 7 did before.