Using Konserve

Using Konserve

This guide walks through how to use Konserve for creating backups and restoring them on another machine or user account.

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Launching Konserve

After downloading or building the binary, simply run the executable.

No installation is required. Konserve is fully portable.

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Creating a Backup

1. Open Konserve
2. Click "Add Folders" or "Add Files" to select what you want to back up
3. (Optional) Click "Save Template" to store this selection for future use
4. Choose a backup location using the "Select Backup Directory" button
5. Press "Create Backup"

Konserve will create a .tar archive containing the selected files/folders and a fingerprint.txt for path mapping.

Example output:

backup_2025-06-10_12-00-00.tar

App Conflict Detection

Before the backup starts, Konserve checks if any known apps (Discord, Steam, OBS, Spotify, Zen Browser) are running and may be locking files.

If detected, you'll see a prompt with three options:

• Close apps & backup — Konserve closes the apps, runs the backup, then relaunches them
• Skip locked files — proceeds with the backup but skips any files it can't open
• Cancel — aborts the backup

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Restoring a Backup

1. Open Konserve
2. Click "Restore Backup"
3. Select the .tar archive created earlier
4. A folder tree will appear showing the original structure
5. Check/uncheck the folders and files you want to restore
6. Click "Restore selected"

Konserve will automatically:

• Restore files to their original paths (or equivalent paths on the current user account)
• Adjust paths if restoring to a different Windows username
• Handle file conflicts according to your Settings

Conflict Resolution

If a file already exists at the restore destination, Konserve handles it based on your conflict resolution setting:

• Prompt (default when enabled) — a prompt appears for each conflict letting you choose Overwrite, Skip, or Rename for that specific file
• Overwrite — replaces existing files silently
• Skip — leaves existing files untouched
• Rename — saves the restored file with a suffix (e.g. file_1.txt)

Configure this in the Settings tab under Conflict Resolution.

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Selective Restore

You can restore just one folder from a backup:

1. Choose the backup archive
2. Uncheck everything else in the restore tree
3. Check only the folder or files you want
4. Click "Restore selected"

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Tips

• Only restore .tar archives you created yourself — Konserve will warn you about this
• Templates are helpful for recurring backup tasks
• Backups are plain .tar files; they can be opened with 7-Zip or other archive tools
• Backups adapt to different usernames automatically when restoring
• If something goes wrong, check konserve-crash.log next to the exe for error details

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Next: Templates