Unable to restore files - Windows 10 permission issues?

Getting Help
1

Full disclosure, I’m a Restic n00b.

I have had plenty of success creating and updating repos. The trouble comes when trying to restore files from a particular drive while using the --include modifier. This is a second hard drive I use for user storage. I get the same result every time I try to restore a specific file or directory that was backed up from this drive. Summary: Restored 0 files/dirs (0 B)

Restoring the entirety of the snapshot works. Using --include on snapshots made of other drives works, too.

I am running Restic 0.18.0 (compiled with go1.24.1) on Windows 10 Home. I gave myself symbolic link privileges, as that can stop this error, but it has not for me.

Any guesses what went wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help.

EDIT: here’s how I’m running it and here is the result.

PS C:\Users\Name> restic -r "L:\Restic backups" restore --verbose 12345 --target "L:\restore_targets" --include "D:\Name\Documents\manuals"
enter password for repository:
repository 12345 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
[0:00] 100.00%  15 / 15 index files loaded
restoring snapshot 12345 of [D:\] at 2025-04-25 TIME by DESKTOP\Name@DESKTOP to L:\restore_targets
Summary: Restored 0 files/dirs (0 B) in 0:10
2

Please post some more information here on what you’re doing: exact commands and output (redacted, of course). I don’t have Windows experience but others that do will probably need more content to help you.

3

Got it - I edited the above post to reflect your suggestions.
I tried the same thing from an Ubuntu VM with the same snapshot from the same repository - same story. See below.

EDIT: This was Restic Linux 0.17.

Name@UbuntuVM:~$ restic -r "/media/Name/Drive/Restic backups" restore --verbose 12345 --target "/media/Name/Drive/restore_targets" --include "/D/Name/Documents/manuals"
enter password for repository:
repository NUMBER opened (version 2, compression level auto)
[0:01] 100.00%  15 / 15 index files loaded
restoring snapshot 12345 of [D:\] at 2025-04-25 TIME by DESKTOP\Name@DESKTOP to /media/Name/Drive/restore_targets
Summary: Restored 0 files/dirs (0 B) in 0:00
4

@aggroturf what is the output of restic -r "path_to/Restic backups" ls 12345 ?
This should show you all files and folders in snapshot 12345.
Then cross check that with your --include, my guess is that your “include” does not match the snapshot.

p.s. on linux you can also do ls -l in the above command, not sure if that works on windows.

5

@GuitarBilly There’s the solution! It was simple user error. The directory did not exist like I thought it did. Thank you for your detective work.
Notice that when Restic concludes a restore process with Summary: Restored 0 files/dirs (0 B) in 0:00 it most likely means the file/directory does not exist as entered. I tried your proposed solution with another snapshot and a directory I knew did not exist. It gave me the same output.