This article provides information about the restore options for AWS S3 buckets and describes how you can restore data to the original or an alternate location.

Use the search feature to search for files and folders across recovery points in a backup set.

You can use one or more filters to narrow down the search results. Click the search bar to view the available filters. For example, if you want to restore files and folders that start with the word exl20 modified between 14 July 2025 and 15 July 2025, expand Advanced Options and select the following:

Here are some of the ways you can use the search filters:

To search for the exact filename, use the Match exact name checkbox. Enter the complete filename in the search bar, excluding the file extension, and then click Search. Selecting the Match exact name checkbox disables the Object Tag, File Type, and File Extension filter.

If you do not select the Match exact name check box, then you are performing a partial file name search. You can search for files with search terms or prefixes. Search terms are substrings of a filename that are separated by a delimiter. For example, search terms for a file Druva_Phoenix.txt are Druva, and Phoenix. You can also use a prefix of a search term to search for files. For example, prefixes of search terms for a file Druva_Phoenix.txt are Dru, Druv, Druva, Pho, Phoe, Phoeni, Phoenix, Druva_Phoenix.txt. The prefix should start from the left of the search term and must be a minimum of 3 characters and a maximum of 64 characters.

📝 Note

​Druva does not support performing a partial filename search using search terms or prefixes starting with special characters. For example, to search for a file _druva.txt, the valid search terms are:

You can also enter _druva.txt and select Match exact name to perform this search.

You can search objects based on tags. Enter your tag’s key and press Enter. Next, enter your tag’s value and press Enter. You can specify multiple tags.

Choose to search for file type. You can add one or more file types. The search results are filtered to show the files that match the search filters.

Search for files of predefined file types such as Office files, Image files, and so on, or enter custom extensions without periods or character prefixes to search for files with custom extensions. The custom extension can have a maximum length of 10 characters.

Enter a file size range to search for files by file size. You can search for file sizes in KBs, MBs, and GBs. The max size must be greater than the min size.

Search for files created or modified between the selected dates. For example, when you enter a date range such as 15/03/2021 (15 March 2021) to 31/03/2021 (31 March 2021), Druva searches for files modified between 15 March 2021, 12:00 am to 31 March 2021, 11:59 pm. In the Date Modified field, you can select a date in either From or To filter, or both of them. For example, if you select only the From date filter, all files created or modified after the From date are listed in the search results. You must choose a date after 1 January 1970.

The Search Results section displays the files and folders that match the search criteria. You can hover over the search query in the search bar to view the applied search filters. You can also modify the search query (highlighted in the screenshot) at any point in time. Scroll down to see more results.

The Name field under Search Results is followed by a sort icon. Initially, the sort icon is in a neutral state, meaning the Name field is not sorted in either ascending or descending order.

You can choose to restore the latest version and specific version of files and folders.

You can select a file or a folder from the search results and click Restore.

The following table lists the restore options available when you select files or folders for restores from the search results.

This option allows you to restore the latest version of the selected file or folder to the original bucket or a different bucket. This option is available for single or multiple files and folder selections. The latest versions of files and folders are restricted to the specified search parameters.

This option allows you to restore specific versions of a single file or a single folder. This option is not available if you select multiple files or multiple folders from the search results.

You can restore folder versions based on the recovery points displayed in the search result. These results will show all the recovery points where that folder is present.

Depending on the search criteria, the latest folder versions are displayed by default.

📝 Note

​In the above example, if the gemstop folder contains more than 2048 files/folders, the Load More option will be visible to load the next set of results.

The following restore options are available for AWS S3 buckets:

You can configure both the restore options with a set of restore settings common across both options. The common restore settings control how Druva restores the AWS S3 bucket objects when the data is likely to get duplicated or overwritten at the restore location.

The following restore settings define how data restore occurs if the files and folders already exist at the target location. These settings are common to both 'Restore to original location' and 'Restore to alternate location' restore options.

This option overwrites files/folders with the same name at the destination, irrespective of the file version or date. This option is selected by default.

This option overwrites files/folders with the same name only if they are older than the version being restored.

If the file/folder you want to restore already exists on the destination, Druva renames the existing file/folder to filename.extension.orig while the version you want to restore is saved with the same name. Subsequent restores append an incremental number to the existing file at the destination. For example filename.extension.orig1, filename.extension.orig2, and so on. For example, assume that one of the files you are restoring from Druva is file.txt, which already exists at the destination. This scenario will explain the naming changes that file.txt undergoes over several restore cycles.

This option does not restore files with the same name at the restore location. The number of files skipped will be displayed in the progress logs.

Recreate the source directory structure at the destination while restoring a file to an alternate location. The upward tree path of the file is always preserved while restoring to the original location. The downward tree path is always preserved by default.

An example of preserve original directory structure:

If you restore a folder called Department from the path

s3://EmpData/Department/Manager/titles

at the restore bucket location, the restored folder hierarchy will be

s3://restoredBucket/Department/Manager/titles

If you choose to restore to the original location on the original S3 bucket, you cannot deselect the 'Preserve original directory structure' option. If you restore to a custom location on the original S3 bucket or another bucket, you can deselect this option.

📝 Note

​We do not recommend deselecting this option, as an overwrite of files can lead to potential data loss.

Restoring one or many versions of single or multiple files generates multiple restore jobs. The number of restore jobs created depends on the number of selected files and their selected versions, and also the number of recovery points that contain these files. These restore jobs will queue up and run serially. You can find job details in the Audit Trails.