You can perform a file-level or a volume-level restore from a block-level backup.
Remember: You cannot apply filters for block-level restores if you ran the backup operations without metadata collection.
High-Level Process for Block-Level Restores
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If you are performing a volume-level browse and restore, the entire volume is restored.
Note
Make sure that the destination volume selected for volume-level restore is clean.
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If you are performing a file-level browse and restore, the following operations occur:
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Depending on whether the metadata collection was enabled during backup, one of the following browse methods is selected if you perform a browse operation:
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If metadata collection was enabled, a browse from the index is initiated.
Note: We recommend that you use the metadata collection option with caution because it might affect block-level backup performance.
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If metadata collection was disabled, a live browse is initiated.
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The selected files and folders are restored.
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Live Browse
Applies to: Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 or later.
Live browse initiates a pseudo-mount which constructs a device to store the blocks. The size of the staging folder must be at least 4 GB. The recommended size of the staging folder is 10% of the restore data, and it can be as large as the restore data. If the size of the staging folder is smaller than the restore data, then the extents are pruned based on the LRU (Least Recently Used) algorithm, for the new extent restores. This might result in decreased performance during the restore operation.
Pruning Blocks to Reclaim Space
The restored blocks are saved in the device files under the job results folder. To reclaim space in the job results directory, the restored blocks are pruned using the LRU (Least Recently Used) algorithm.
Best Practice
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Stage the extents on a high-performing disk storage media (SSD).
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Perform file system defragmentation on the source volume.