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My laptop got broken recently (I had Ubuntu on it), and I've backups of my files on external HDD. The problem is that my new laptop has Windows 8 on it and I don't feel like switching to Ubuntu on it just yet. Is there a way to restore my precious audio and video files to my new computer (all backup files are on GPG-format)?

Eliah Kagan
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OlpeFIN
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2 Answers2

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Yes. Déjà-Dup is a graphical front-end to Duplicity (Wikipedia page), a command-line backup program. You can run Duplicity on Windows using Cygwin, and restore the files from the command line.

Setting up Duplicity on Windows may be somewhat involved. This guy has some instructions; you may be able to skip setting up some of the dependencies (pexpect, SSH) which are needed for making remote backups.

If I recall correctly, the command to restore is

duplicity restore file:///path/to/backup /path/to/restore/to

You can then access the restored files in that directory.

If you're not familiar with the command line, it would be easier to boot the computer off a live CD, and use duplicity or Déjà-Dup from Linux to restore the files onto your Windows partition.

Mechanical snail
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The question is about windows 8, but if you are on windows 11, you can install windows subsystem for linux and install ubuntu. then you start the ubuntu shell, and from there you first give the command

sudo apt install duplicity

after that you can do

df -h

and it will give you a list of drives. in the Filesystem column you will find the drive letters like C:, D:\ and so on. Alongside that line in the Mounted on column you will find the mount points like /mnt/c, /mnt/d and so on.

assuming your backup is in /mnt/e/backup folder and you want to retore it to /mnt/d/restore folder, you give the command

duplicity restore file:///mnt/e/backup /mnt/d/restore

it may ask you for the GnuPG passphrase, and you just type that in. The restore will start.

Kinjal Dixit
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