Granular Restore

Granular Restore is the targeted recovery of individual data objects instead of a complete system or data set. Depending on the application, these can be individual files, emails, user accounts, records, folders, contacts or configuration elements, for example. The aim is to restore only the object actually needed and thereby reduce time, data transfer and operational impact.

A granular restore is particularly helpful in cases of accidental deletion, erroneous changes or isolated data loss. The prerequisite is that the backup solution understands the data structure of the protected application sufficiently and can uniquely identify individual objects. Permissions, metadata and relationships should be restored as consistently as possible along with the object.

Granular recovery complements comprehensive restart procedures in Business Continuity Management. While a full restore targets larger outages, the granular restore enables precise and usually faster correction of individual damage.