So I had to do a real restore for the first time. it was a data-only restore (we lost the external array on our file server and had to rebuild it) and I discovered just how non-intuitive the restoration process is for large amounts of data.
As a suggestion for Symantec, please take a hard look at the restore selection options. I found them completely non-intuitive and so difficult to use that I ended up making a tech-support call just to verify I had selected the right files. An option that clearly says "restore the latest versions" would be really nice.
Here is my recent experience:
I have a full backup and a bunch of incrementals. I needed to restore a directory (REDIRECTS) and its files from the root of my F: drive.
Image1 shows a couple of things. For now it shows that the REDIRECTS folder was backed up from the F: drive.
The first option in the restore is files/folders or a full - this is understandable and I knew to pick files/folders.
The second option is "backups" or "search". Since the "backups" option says the browse through the backup sets, it is obvious I would not use that one since with all of the incremental backups I will have files scattered all over dozens of incrementals. I selected "search"
Getting path and folder name working correctly is not trivial and I never did get it right.
Entering F:\REDIRECTS in the Path brings back nothing. Entering F: in the path and REDIRECTS in the folder name brings nothing. Entering \ and REDIRECTS brings nothing. Entering \REDIRECTS in the path brings nothing. Entering just REDIRECTS in the folder name brings nothing.
Entering just REDIRECTS in the path finally brought up a list of files and folders but it was over 4000 entries long and each one has to be clicked individually! no "select all" or shift-clicking allowed - seriously????
Frustrated, I tried the opther option - which appears to imply I will need to scan through all of the different backups and find all of my files individually.
My first problem was that it doesn't show my full backup in the list of available ones to select from (see image 1) As you can see from the list of backups to pick from, it does not show my Full Backup date (1/24/14) (see image2 to show that it is in the list of backup sets) and it only shows most of the incrementals (but not all - 1/29/14, 1/30/14, and 1/31/14 are also missing from the list)
Attempting to select multiple backup sets brings up a dialog explaining that it turns out that you just have to somehow know that selecting the most recent incremental backup automatically selects all previous incrementals and the (non-visible) incrementals and full backup and does what you want it to do.
As a suggestion to Symantec: The restore process is not something that is done very often and usually when it is invoked, the situation is tense and the people are under a lot of pressure. Please take a hard look at it and see if you cannot come up with a way to make it more intuitive for the admins.
Mark
p.s. fix your website so IE11 will upload images!