I am an UNIX only admin and run restic successfully for several years together with rest-server and NetApp S3. I now want to offer restic for Windows users, too, but my Windows knowledge is nearly zero. I even do not have access to a Windows system. Is there a HOWTO for Windows which explains how …

How to set an environment variable is outside of restic’s scope, it’s simply something you do the way that your specific operating system or shell wants you do to it. I think you can find a ton of pages on the Internet that explains how to set environment variables in Windows, e.g. this one: Environ…

@Framsfex have a look here if your windows users are not comfortable with the commandline in windows: [image] 2025 / best GUI for restic Getting Help There are a couple of topics available that are about a cross-platform GUI for restic. Some are really outdate…

May I suggest looking at one of my previous posts Restic on Windows: Another user trying to exclude directories - #5 by punchcard for things which could be or should be in an exclude file? On most Windows machines there will be a virus checker. You should tell the virus checker to ignore restic…

I could run “restic backup C:\” on Windows 10, but restic reports hundreds of read errors: error: openfile for readdirnames failed: open \?\C:\Windows\Provisioning\Autopilot: Access is denied. error: openfile for readdirnames failed: open \?\C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\aero\VSCache: Access is deni…

Personally I can’t help but wonder why on earth you’d want to back up your Windows directory. That said, did you try using the --use-fs-snapshot option? Also, did you follow @punchcard ’s advice and made sure that there’s no antivirus or malware software interfering with restic’s access to files? A…

--use-fs-snapshot is new to me, the Linux restic does not has this option. But when I try it, I get: c:\restic>restic.exe --insecure-tls backup -v --use-fs-snapshot --exclude-file C:\restic\exclude A:\ B:\ C:\ D:\ E:\ F:\ G:\ H:\ I:\ J:\ K:\ L:\ M:\ N:\ O:\ P:\ Q:\ R:\ S:\ T:\ U:\ V:\ A:\ does not…

What are you even trying to do here? It seems to me that you are shooting commands like you’re trying to squash mosquitos on the sky with a bazooka. Why would you even contemplate trying to back up e.g. A:\, to take one example? There is so much weird stuff going on here that I’m not sure where to…

This would seem like you are not running as administrator. A unix person might say that you need to be root. See cmd as administrator for the regular command line. For PowerShell I open a powershell as administrator and use the following commands to check: $currentPrincipal = New-Object Security.Pr…

Why would you even contemplate trying to back up e.g. A:\, to take one example? I want a full backup, therefore I use A:\ .. Z:\ because Windows does not have a root directory like UNIX with / My Windows knowledge is nearly zero, I do not use it all, but I need to write a documentation how to u…

I offer my Windows restic users a ZIP contining: restic@rs1:/home/restic/windows: l -RW- 4,078 2026-07-14 13:48 exclude -RW- 849 2026-07-14 13:36 LIESMICH.txt -RW- 254 2026-07-13 02:30 rbackup.cmd -RW- 281 2026-07-14 12:57 restic.cmd -RWX 31,660,032 2026-07-05 09:52 restic…

Looking for a Windows HOWTO

Getting Help

GuitarBilly July 8, 2026, 7:17pm 3

@Framsfex have a look here if your windows users are not comfortable with the commandline in windows:

p.s. great to see so many items being developed, something to fit everyone.