The Compare tab is a targeted restore tool. Instead of copying everything, it scans a backed-up folder against a local folder on your PC and shows you only the files that are missing — useful when you accidentally deleted a file or folder and want to recover just those items without touching anything else.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/Pachanga12/Kopia_Desk_Beta_1/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
How It Works
Switch to the Compare tab
Click the Comparar tab in the top bar of the main panel. The view shows a checklist of backed-up folders on the selected drive.
Select the backup drive
Choose the drive that holds your backup from the destination dropdown in the sidebar. The Compare panel will populate with the available backup folders from that drive.
Mark folders to compare
Use the checkboxes to select which backed-up folders you want to compare. Only the folders you mark will be scanned — nothing runs automatically.
Confirm local folder paths
Kopia Desk calls
sources:known-paths (knownSourcePaths) to check whether a local path was remembered from a previous compare session. If a path is known, it is pre-filled. If not, you will be prompted with a folder dialog to select the local folder that corresponds to the backed-up one.Run the comparison
Click Comparar seleccionados. For each marked folder,
restore:scan reads the manifest, scans the local folder (applying the same default exclusion filters as backup), and classifies every manifest entry:missing— in the manifest and physically present on the backup drive, but absent from the local folder.lostFromBackup— in the manifest but the file no longer exists on the backup drive (deleted manually, drive corruption, etc.).totalChecked— total number of manifest entries examined.
Review and select files to restore
The results panel shows the
missing files grouped by folder. Select which files you want to recover — you can pick individual files or the entire list.Restore selected files
restore:copy-files copies the selected files from backupFullPath back to the local folder, preserving the original relative path. Progress events with phase: "restore" are emitted as each file completes.lostFromBackup Detection
Files listed under lostFromBackup appear in the manifest but are no longer physically present on the backup drive. Common causes include manually deleting files from the backup folder, drive corruption, or a previous interrupted backup that was never cleaned up.
If you see files listed as lost from backup and do not clear them from the manifest, the next backup scan will still mark them as “already backed up.” This means they will not be re-copied from the source, and the gap in your backup will persist silently. Use the option to remove them from the manifest so the next backup re-copies them.
lostFromBackup entries are found:
- Remove from manifest — deletes the entries from the manifest so the next backup scan treats them as new files and re-copies them from the source.
- Ignore — leaves the manifest unchanged. The entries will appear again on the next compare.
Compare vs. Restore
| Compare | Restore | |
|---|---|---|
| What it copies | Only files missing from the local folder | All files in the backup folder |
| Requires an existing local folder | Yes | No |
Detects lostFromBackup | Yes | No |
| Best use case | Accidental deletion recovery | After format or new PC |
Remembered Paths
rememberSourcePath writes to .kopia-data/sources.json on the backup drive itself. This means the remembered mapping travels with the backup drive, not with any particular PC.