Can i restore the scan reports into a backup? How?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Using Avast on Win7, i am scanning parts of the disk daily.
Due to a major configuration mess, i was forced to revert to a backup older than one week.
Now, the scans reported do no longer contain the scans from last week.
Trying to recover that information (from C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\report) did not help. Even after a reboot, the scans dont get listed.

Any hints about how to consolidate the older information with the newer data would be appreciated.
Thank you

2

If this is a backup that used disk imaging, takes an exact image of the disk/partition then the old data is effectively gone. The old disk/partition effectively gets overwritten by the last backup image.

The only way you could possibly have prevented this effective loss would have to actually done a disk/partition backup before restoring the old disk/partition. On my hard drive imaging software I can mount the disk/partition image and pull the file/folder back.

Whilst there are file recovery programs you could possibly try, I don’t know if they would have any success as much of the old disk space would have been overwritten by restoring your old backup.

3

Thanks, DavidR, for bearing wih me.

You are correct. My use case wasnt descibed too well (backup/restore mess).
I have been trying to avoid describing unnecessary complications… like: the entire machine is a virtual one, thus i can use snapshots to revert to (very handy i many cases). Now, let me rephrase:
i have been branching away around 2 weeks ago. One branch was connected to the net and did daily scans, the other branch wasnt connected. That is, where i did some experiments (offline). Those experiments succeeded and i am trying to integrate, adding in the net, upgrading Avast, and so forth, in order to prepare abandoning the initial main path…
I am almost done with that, Avast (among other things) does work fine again (in the experimental path), only the gap in the daily scans keeps irritating…

Sure, there is the option to ignore that gap just reflecting the “unconnected status”. Maybe i am too keen on restoring the working order. :wink:
OTOH that Win7 is just a remnant of an old working horse of mine. The host (and most of the other VM’s) are linux based. :slight_smile:

What SHOULD I restore, in order to properly display the “past life of OLD-MAIN” in “Experimental” prior to drop OLD-MAIN?

I was proud to locate the folder (mentionned before), that was protected by Avast. But halting the Avast engine, i have been able to replace the files with the ones from the OLD-MAIN branch. But… the gap is still there, meaning “The folder wasnt the correct one containing the scan reports in the first place.”

Understanding now, that some help from some knowledgable person would come in handy?

4

Unfortunately I’m not the guy for that knowledgable help. I have never used a VM installation, preferring to stick with the one OS on my systems (XP, win7 and win10), so I’m not familiar how the snapshots would compare with a conventional hard disk image (bit for bit).

Hopefully someone who is familiar with/using a VM can offer some advice.

5

I believe DavidR is right. You would have had to take a new snapshot or image before you restored the previous snapshot to have saved the missing week+ logs. By any chance did you image your Linux host drive anytime close to the restore? Also, it might be worth asking on your VM software’s help site to rule out all chances. Good luck. :slight_smile:

6

OMG, that is, what i intended to avoid: confusion about irrelevant things.

  • I am pretty familiar with VM’s, as i am using them since many years non stop
  • A snapshot is virtually freezing one point in time on a virtual disk, making sure, all future changes get collected in a differencing image
  • still have all the snapshots involved of both branches + a regular backup ony few days old. That is why i could navigate to any point in time, if needed. BUT:
  • i have not been asking for a discussion of my infrastructure (which would involve explaining even more weird decisions) but the problem that got me to ask for help is this:
  • On my way to consolidate & integrate 2 branches (paths in history), i noticed, that the OLD-MAIN got scans & reports, whereas EXPERIMENTAL didn’t. And my home-grown attempt to preserve the data of those scan-reports fails due to (presumeably) a misunderstanding about Avast’s inner workings and storage structure.

Does this help to dissipate the misunderstandings?

7

It looks like i found the cause of my pains:
The information about the reports folder, that i did use, in an attempt to remedy my problem, originated from a post on this forum, but its content seems to have been wrong.
The information about the reports gets stored in different files (and folders) making it too hard to tamper with them for a minor reason.
Among the places, i had overlooked, is “C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast” where several files appear to have relevance (*.dat, *.db, *.ini).
All in all, i decided to leave this mess as it is and focus on other endeavors. Too much work for too little effect would have ensued otherwise.

Case closed.

8

Thanks for taking the time to give us an update on the problem.

9

At least in theory you can retrieve the data if you do not have some sort of backup of them by recovering deleted files with a tool like e.g. TestDisk.