Recovery

Your laptop is lost, stolen or reinstalled. This page explains what survives, and how to get your synced folders back on the replacement machine.

In short: sign the old machine out of your Proton account. Then, on the new one, install the client and sign in. On the Computers page, choose Continue This Backup Here… on the old computer, then Restore Folders… on this one.

• 1. What survives
• 2. Restore your synced folders
• 3. How the restore works
• 4. Known gaps

1. What survives

On Proton Drive

What	Where
Every file that finished uploading	Proton Drive
The computer's registration and its backup	Computers in the app and the web
One folder per synced folder, under that computer	Proton Drive
The machine profile: which folders were synced, to which local path, in which mode; pins; ignore patterns	.proton-drive-linux/profile-<machine id>.json under the computer's backup, one per computer that syncs into it, end-to-end encrypted like any other file. Clients before 3.5.0 wrote profile.json
Your account, keys and shares	Proton

The service rewrites the profile a short while after you add, remove or switch a synced folder, or change a pin.

Lost with the machine

What	Why	Recoverable?
Changes still in staging/ or recovery/	Writes that were accepted locally but never reached Proton Drive	No
New files in a synced folder that had not uploaded yet	Same	No
config.json: mountpoint, cache limit, bandwidth limits, appearance	Local config directory	Set again in Preferences
The local database and content cache	Local disk	Not needed; rebuilt from Proton Drive

Only the first two rows are real losses. Before you retire a working machine, check that pdfs sync queue prints "Nothing queued" (or that Sync → Overview shows nothing waiting).

Before anything else: revoke the old session

The lost machine holds a decrypted content cache, a plain-text index of your file names and a live session in its keyring. Whether its disk was encrypted decides how much of that is exposed, but the session is valid either way.

Sign the lost machine out from your Proton account's security settings before you restore. The client cannot do that for you.

If you have also lost your password, account recovery is Proton's matter, not this client's. Proton Drive is end-to-end encrypted: without the password or a recovery method, the data cannot be decrypted.

2. Restore your synced folders

Step 1: Install and sign in

Install the client as described in Installation and sign in with pdfs-app. Signing in from the app also starts the service.

Step 2: Continue the old computer's backup

Tell this machine which computer it replaces, so new changes go into the existing backup instead of a second, empty one.

• In the app: open Computers, open the menu of the old computer and choose Continue This Backup Here….

• From a terminal:

  pdfs devices list                 # find the old computer's UID
  pdfs devices adopt UID

Adoption takes effect at once and is stored in config.json as device_uid. It survives a change of hostname. pdfs devices adopt --clear returns to the default, which is to match a computer whose name equals this machine's hostname.

Note

Without adoption, the client only finds the old computer if this machine has the same hostname. Otherwise it registers a new computer, and nothing points at the old backup.

Step 3: Restore the folders

• In the app: open Computers, open the menu of This computer and choose Restore Folders…. Confirm or change the local path of each folder.

• From a terminal:

  $ pdfs sync restore
  Documents [mirror] -> /home/you/Documents (Enter to accept, 'n' to skip, or a path)
  Projects [ondemand] -> /home/you/Projects (Enter to accept, 'n' to skip, or a path)

  Press Enter to accept a path, type n to skip the folder, or type another path. --yes accepts every proposal without asking.

For each folder you accept, the service creates the local directory, attaches it to the folder in the backup, restores its mode (Mirror or Online only) and downloads it. Follow the progress on Sync → Overview or with pdfs sync list.

Tip

Restore into empty or missing directories. If a directory already holds files, for example from another backup, the client cannot tell which side is newer. It keeps both: your local file is renamed to a (sync-conflict …) copy and the version from Proton Drive is downloaded. See Conflicts.

Step 4: Restore the rest by hand

• Available offline files. The profile records them, but the restore does not apply them yet. Mark them again in the app, or with pdfs pin PATH.
• Preferences. Set the cache limit, bandwidth limits, mountpoint and appearance again.

Step 5: Clean up

If this machine registered a second computer before you adopted the old one, remove it:

pdfs devices list
pdfs devices rm UID

Warning

Removing a computer deletes its backup from Proton Drive. Check what is under it in Computers → Browse Files first.

Restoring another computer's folders

To bring folders from a computer that still exists, for example a desktop whose documents you want on a laptop, use Restore to This Computer… on that computer's row, or:

pdfs sync restore --device UID

The folders stay part of the other computer's backup and sync in both directions. This machine does not take over that computer's backup.

Moving another computer's backup here

To switch computers for good, for example from a Windows PC to this Linux machine, move the old computer's folders into this computer's backup instead. Use Move to This Computer… on that computer's row, or:

pdfs devices list                 # find the old computer's UID
pdfs devices migrate UID

Each folder moves on Proton Drive itself, so nothing is uploaded again and no storage is used twice. A folder whose name this computer already uses gets the old computer's name added, for example Documents (DESKTOP-1). The restore picker then opens, as in Step 3, so you choose where each folder goes here.

The old computer stays in your account, without those folders. Unlike adoption, this machine keeps its own name and backup.

Warning

Stop Proton Drive on the old computer first. A client still running there sees its folders disappear, and may upload them again as new.

3. How the restore works

This section is for the curious and for anyone debugging a restore.

• Which computer the machine is. At start, the service uses device_uid from config.json when it is set. When it is not, it looks for a Linux computer in the account whose name equals the hostname, and registers a new one when there is none. An adopted UID that no longer exists in the account is reported in the log instead of being replaced silently.
• What can be restored. pdfs sync restore lists the folders directly under the computer's backup, except .proton-drive-linux. Folders already synced on this machine are skipped.
• Proposed paths. Several computers may sync into one backup, each with its own profile. The profile written by a computer with this machine's hostname is used first, then the newest one that has the folder. When it names a local path whose parent directory exists on this machine, that path is proposed. Otherwise the proposal is ~/<folder name>. The service never writes to a path you have not confirmed.
• Attaching by UID. The restore binds each local path to the remote folder's UID, not to its name. Restoring Documents into ~/docs works.
• Downloading. A restored folder starts with an empty sync baseline. Against an empty local directory, every remote file counts as new and is downloaded. Files present on both sides with no baseline are compared by content: identical files are taken as they are, and different ones become conflict copies, as described above.
• The wipe guard. A sync pass in which every previously synced file has vanished locally is refused instead of being mirrored to Proton Drive as a mass deletion. A folder that was emptied by accident therefore does not empty the backup.
• The profile format. Each profile carries a version field. A client refuses a profile written by a newer, incompatible client instead of applying part of it.

4. Known gaps

Gap	Effect
Pins are backed up but not restored	Mark files available offline again by hand
No warning at shutdown or sign-out while changes are queued	Check pdfs sync queue before you retire a machine
The full disaster drill (delete all local state, restore, compare byte for byte) has not been run against a live account	The individual steps are tested; the whole sequence is not

Planned work is tracked in the roadmap.