Preserving files and folders on client computers

By default, restoring from an image file overwrites every file on the destination partition of the client computer, except the image file if it is stored locally.

During a restore task you can choose to overwrite the image file, or preserve files and folders that you want to keep on the destination partition of the client computer.

Table 3-2 shows some examples of the way in which you can use this feature:

Table 3-2 File preservation examples
Method
Description
Preserve client computer data files and folders.
You can select data files and folders from any of the partitions that are overwritten by the restore operation, but all files are preserved on a single partition. If necessary, to avoid name collisions when preserving files and folders from different partitions, specify the destination name and path for each file or folder.
Save the image file locally.
If you are performing a Clone operation from an image file stored locally, you can preserve the image file.
Create and restore a user package in a single task.
If you include a Move the User: Create step, a Clone step, and a Move the User: Restore step in one task, and store the user package locally, you need to preserve the user package during the clone step. You do this in the same way as you preserve other data files on the client computer. You need to specify the path and name of the user package file that you want to preserve.
When you run the task, the user package is created and saved on the client computer. The task then preserves the user package when the client is restored with an image file. Finally the Move the User settings are restored back onto the client.

Any files that are restored from the image with the same name and location as the preserved files are overwritten by the preserved files. To prevent this you can rename files when you select them to preserve.

You can also run file preservation using command-line switches.

For more information on command-line switches, see the Symantec Ghost Reference Guide.



To preserve files and folders on client computers