Can a Deja Dup backup from Ubuntu be restored on Windows?

Question

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)?

Solution

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.

Comments

[wrymug]

Here's an archive of that blog post