Restore WITHOUT overwriting?

[stephenrea]

I recently had a client's hard drive die.

For space considerations, we were only backing up their user folder.

I put in a new hard drive, reinstalled the OS and all the apps.

When I try and use Retrospect to restore the user folder, it insists on overwriting files I've already recreated, mostly preference files with application activation and serial number codes.

 

If I use the "Restore Entire Disk" option, it deletes the entire user folder and makes a new one, losing files that already exist.

If I use the "Replace Corresponding Files" option, it restores all the files, and overwrites newer files that already exist.

If I use the "files and folders" option, it makes a new folder and none of the paths are correct for the user folder folders.

 

I want it to restore all the files that aren't already there. Is this possible???

 

Details:

Both computers are PowerMac G5 1.6GHz, runing Mac OS 10.3.9.

We are running Retrospect 6.1.126 with driver update 6.1.5.102.

Retrospect Client version 6.1.130

(i'll check for updates as soon as I post)

[rhwalker]

Might I suggest moving / renaming the client's user folder, doing a "Restore Entire Disk" for the user folder (you don't say, but it seems that you have /Users defined as a subvolume), then duplicate the renamed / moved /Users tree onto the restored tree? That would seem to give you what you want.

 

Or, you could do a piped "tar" in Terminal (cd /RenamedUsers; tar cvf - . | tar xvf - /Users)

 

Yes, your RDU is out of date, but that won't affect this issue one bit.

 

Russ