The Virtual Drive tool creates a virtual drive in your Windows file system. That drive gives you access to the data you have backed up. You can copy or drag and drop files to a local drive from there.
Use the Virtual Drive to quickly restore selected files or directories from any backup session.
Virtual Drive installation
The Virtual Drive is a Windows utility. It works on the same versions of Windows as the Backup Manager:
- Windows XP SP3
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows 8 / 8.1
- Windows 10
- Windows Server 2003 SP2
- Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2
- Windows SBS 2011
- Windows Server 2012 / 2012 R2
- Windows Server 2016
You can install the Virtual Drive through a set-up wizard or use silent/unattended installation.
Both of the options depend on the Backup Manager installation, so if the Backup Manager isn't installed on your computer yet, please install it before you get down to the Virtual Drive installation.
When the installation is completed, a new local drive appears in the system, along with the regular "C:", "D:", and "E:" (DVD) drives. The drive is named "B:" unless this letter has already been taken. You can specify any other letter using the InitialVirtualDriveLetter parameter in the config.ini file (see Settings page for details).
Silent Virtual Drive installation
To use the silent installation mode, start cmd.exe and run the following command:
mxb-vd-windows-x64.exe /S /D=C:\Program Files\VD
Parameters:
-
mxb-vd-windows-x64.exeis the name of the installation file you have downloaded. -
/Sstands for the silent installation mode. -
/Dfollowed by a directory path indicates where you want to install the Virtual Drive. -
-InitialVirtualDriveLetteris an optional parameter available starting from 16.8 release. It lets you customize the letter the Virtual Drive is mounted to during installation, for example-InitialVirtualDriveLetter Q.
Virtual Drive settings
The Virtual Drive is usually used with predefined settings. If needed, advanced users can change them through a special configuration file automatically created during the Backup Manager installation (config.ini).
- Open the config.ini file.
- Add the
[VirtualDrive]section (if it isn't there yet). - Populate the section with the parameters you want to configure as shown in the example below.
- Restart the internal process associated with the Backup Manager to apply the new settings.
[VirtualDrive]
ShowAllSessions=1
VirtualDriveRestoreCacheType=memory
You can learn more about editing config.ini from the Advanced settings instruction.
Settings that you can turn on and off
The settings listed below are disabled by default (set to =0). To enable any of them, change 0 to 1.
-
ShowLatestAvailableFiles– gives you access to files that were removed or excluded from the backup selection. -
ShowAllSessions– gives you access to failed backup sessions (on condition that some valid data got successfully backed up). -
ExtendedVirtualDriveLogging– starts extended logging. The logs are written down to the application log. Keep in mind that the logs can take up a considerable amount of disk space.
The following setting is enabled by default (set to =1):
-
VirtualDriveRestoreCacheEnabled– starts Virtual Drive caching to speed up viewing and copying large data sets.
Settings that you can adjust
-
VirtualDriveRestoreCacheType– defines a storage type for Virtual Drive cache. Supported values:memory(default) andFS. WhenVirtualDriveRestoreCacheTypeis set tomemory, the cache files are kept in the operation memory (it helps improve performance). WhenVirtualDriveRestoreCacheTypeis set toFS, the cache is saved to the file system (your hard disk). This can lower overall performance but lets you allocate more space for the cache. -
VirtualDriveRestoreCacheLocation– defines a directory that the cache is written to (ifVirtualDriveRestoreCacheLocationis set toFS). By default, the value is set to your temporary folder. You can change it to any other location, for example:C:\virtual-drive\vd-restore-cache. -
VirtualDriveRestoreCacheSizeLimitInMb– defines the maximum memory or disk size (set to256MB by default). -
InitialVirtualDriveLetter(available starting from version 16.8 released in August 2016) – the drive letter the Virtual Drive should use (instead of the default "B:" drive). In case the specified letter is taken, the Virtual Drive will search for the next available letter in the alphabet. For example, ifInitialVirtualDriveLetter=M, the Virtual Drive is mounted to the "M:" drive. If this is not possible, it will try "N" and so on.