How to Restore a Get Backup Archive on Windows Platform

TAR Archive (.tgz or .tar)

TAR archives are supported by many archive utilities (WinZip, Win RAR, 7-Zip and so on). If you have one, right-click on the archive in Explorer and see if there is an extraction command in the pop-up menu. Otherwise, open the archive in the utility and choose the extraction option.

You can download 7-Zip (freeware) from the developer's web site:
https://www.7-zip.org/

PeaZip, another freeware utility:
https://peazip.com

TAR Archive Split into Parts (.aaa)

The file extension with alphabetically altering letters indicates that the archive was split into parts. You need to merge these parts to have a solid .tgz or .tar archive. How to handle a .tgz or .tar file is described above.

To combine the parts, you can use a third-party utility which provides a graphic user interface (recommended), or use a utility built into the operating system.

The PeaZip software is capable of restoring your archive from the parts. Do the following:

1. Change the file extension from letters to numbers. Replace aaa with 001, aab with 002, and so on. You should preserve the sequence of the parts. To rename a file, right-click on it and choose Rename.
2. In PeaZip, select the first part with the .001 extension and choose the Extract command.

MS Windows provides a built-in utility to combine parts of a file. You need to compose a command line containing the paths to the parts and the path to save the created file. Then run this command in PowerShell. This is an example for merging three parts:

cmd.exe /c copy c:\source.aaa /b + c:\source.aab /b + c:\source.aac /b c:\dest.tgz /b

Here “c:\source.aaa”, “c:\source.aab”, “c:\source.aac” are paths to the parts. The last path “c:\dest.tgz” is for the destination file. Replace them with your own. Note that each path is followed by “ /b” (space, slash and letter b).

Note that on older versions of Windows such as Windows 7, you should use this command:

copy c:\source.aaa /b + c:\source.aab /b + c:\source.aac /b c:\dest.tgz /b

Encrypted Archives

The .aes128, .aes256, .3des and .bfe extensions indicate that the archive has been encrypted. To decrypt it, use the openssl software for Windows. You can download it from this web page:
https://code.google.com/archive/p/openssl-for-windows

The openssl package contains the openssl.exe application in the bin folder. You should launch this application and run an appropriate shell command.

In the samples below, “source.aes256”, “source.aes128”, “source.3des” and “source.bfe” are names of encrypted files. “dest.tgz” is a name for the decrypted file that will be created.

AES256 encryption:
enc -d -in c:\source.aes256 -out c:\dest.tgz -aes256

AES128 encryption:
enc -d -in c:\source.aes128 -out c:\dest.tgz -aes128

Triple DES encryption:
enc -d -in c:\source.3des -out c:\dest.tgz -des3

Blowfish encryption:
enc -d -in c:\source.bfe -out c:\dest.tgz -bf

Once the archive is decrypted, follow the procedure above to extract files from a .tgz or .tar archive.