I was looking at my backup directory and discovered that there are a bunch of [old] backup files that Reflect doesn't show.  Is there a way to figure out what they were backups of?   When I click on one of them Reflect says it can't find the file..  They are probably leftover files from previous backup settings and likely not of real importance, but I am curious that Reflect just can't see them.

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Bernie - 20 February 2021 2:59 PM

I was looking at my backup directory and discovered that there are a bunch of [old] backup files that Reflect doesn't show. 

Can you post a screenshot of the "backup directory" where you see these files?

Go to the Restore tab in Reflect, select the appropriate sub-tab (Image vs. File & Folder), click "Folders to search", and add the directory containing these backups to Reflect's list.  That should cause them to be shown in Reflect's list of backups.  From there you can click one and open the Restore wizard to see what's in there.  If they're orphaned backups, i.e. some older backups in the chain that they depend on don't exist anymore, then you might not be able to work with them at all.

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capair45 - 20 February 2021 3:10 PM

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Bernie - 20 February 2021 2:59 PM

I was looking at my backup directory and discovered that there are a bunch of [old] backup files that Reflect doesn't show. 

Can you post a screenshot of the "backup directory" where you see these files?

The backup in question is the one from 2019 that's 250+ gigs long..  Another amusing anomaly is that I seem to have a bunch of "error_loading" entries but when I check the logs all of  those backups happened OK.

And I forgot to mention: I'm running Reflect 7.3.5550 on win10/2004

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jphughan - 20 February 2021 3:31 PM

Go to the Restore tab in Reflect, select the appropriate sub-tab (Image vs. File & Folder), click "Folders to search", and add the directory containing these backups to Reflect's list.  That should cause them to be shown in Reflect's list of backups.  From there you can click one and open the Restore wizard to see what's in there.  If they're orphaned backups, i.e. some older backups in the chain that they depend on don't exist anymore, then you might not be able to work with them at all.

That did the trick -- it showed me that it was a complete system backup -- By the dates I'm guessing it was a "final" full backup of my win7 system before I moved to win10.   Now I'll have to ponder whether I need to keep it or not.  but Thanks!

That 250GB backup is a Full backup, so it wouldn't have any dependencies.  If you load it into your Restore view using that "Folders to search" method, clicking on it once in the list will show the disk(s) and partition(s) included in the image at the top of the Restore window.  If you want to browse its contents, click Browse and choose which partitions from that backup you want to mount, then you'll be able to browse it like any other hard drive.

Happy to help!  I also forgot to address the error_loading files.  That means that Reflect encountered some problem trying to use those backups, which can render later backups in the chain useless.  By renaming them, Reflect essentially evicted them from the set.  What's strange though is that those backups are all from a set beginning "0F", and yet you don't have a Full backup for that set.  All Full backups end with 00-00.  So at this point even if those backups were intact, you wouldn't be able to use them.  But since Reflect had some sort of problem with them in the past as well, I would delete them.

Can you mount that image by right-clicking it and selecting "Explore Image"  That may give you an idea of what it is.

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jphughan - 20 February 2021 3:47 PM

That 250GB backup is a Full backup, so it wouldn't have any dependencies.  If you load it into your Restore view using that "Folders to search" method, clicking on it once in the list will show the disk(s) and partition(s) included in the image at the top of the Restore window.  If you want to browse its contents, click Browse and choose which partitions from that backup you want to mount, then you'll be able to browse it like any other hard drive.

the reason that there are no backups to go with those error files is that I only keep a week's worth of backups.  so the backups associated with those errors got "aged out"

Glad to hear it's expected, but when Reflect evicted those from the set, they also no longer became subject to Reflect's retention policy, so you should delete them yourself and reclaim that storage.