▶️ Watch a video of this tutorial on YouTube
Product Tour: Learn how to find and restore an older version of a file
Snapshots will retain multiple versions of your files, as well as files you've deleted. These can add up, leading to an overwhelming effort to try to sort through various versions. When you're looking for a specific file in a snapshot, or when you want to compare versions of a file across multiple snapshots, use CCC's Snapshot Browser.
- Click Volumes in CCC's sidebar
- Select your backup volume
- Select one or more (up to all†) snapshots in the Snapshots table
- Right-click on the selection and choose View in Snapshot Browser
† The amount of time required to index snapshots for searching increases linearly as you add snapshots to the browser. If you plan to search by file name, select fewer snapshots for faster search performance. Note that you can select discontiguous snapshots by holding down the Command key as you make your selections.
The Snapshot Browser will load the current state of the destination volume, then interleave the differences from each snapshot. When multiple versions of a file are present, click the disclosure triangle next to that file to view the available versions:
The "current" version of the file is listed first, then each version is listed beneath it with a date indicating when the snapshot was created. To see a preview of the file, select any version of the file, then click Preview in the toolbar. You can then use the arrow keys to toggle the preview between versions. When you select an older version of the file, the attribute differences are indicated in the sidebar.
Files that are not present in the "current" state of the destination (i.e. files that were deleted from the source prior to the most recent backup), but retained in snapshots, will be indicated in red, along with a "Deleted" token in the Info column. Click the disclosure triangle next to these files to see previous versions of those files.
Restoring files from the Snapshot Browser
If you find a version of a file that you would like to recover, simply right-click on that item and choose Restore this item…. CCC will prompt you to select a location where you would like to have the file restored.