Backing up and Restoring Your Altium Vault Installation

Modified by Jason Howie on May 31, 2017

Contents of the Zip Archive
Accessing the Backup/Restore Tool
Backup Syntax and Switches
Restore Syntax and Switches
The Function of the Restore Point
Errors During Backup or Restore

An Altium Vault can hold a broad range of valuable design data. A key requirement of ensuring the long-term integrity of this design data, is backing it up. The standard Altium Vault installation includes a backup and restore tool, accessed via a command prompt.

The default location of the backup tool is in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\BackupTool\.

The name of the backup tool is avbackup.exe

This image shows each command and their switches.

NOTE: You must run the command prompt in administrator mode to be able to use the Backup and Restore tool.

TIP: While it is not possible to paste into a command prompt using Ctrl+V, you can paste via the right-click menu. Copy the required strings from this page and paste using this technique to save time and avoid mistakes.

Contents of the Zip Archive

The tool backs up the entire Vault and user-data, including:

Full database backup, including: models, components, managed sheets, released designs & installations acquired via the Network Installation Service.
All revisions of above
Repositories and included managed designs
Search index
User-defined settings

Accessing the Backup/Restore Tool

To use the tool:

Launch a Windows Command Prompt.
Navigate to the correct folder: cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\BackupTool\
To run the tool and list the available options, at the Command Prompt, type: avbackup ?

Note the ?, including this displays help on the functions available in the backup tool, the functions include:

backup — Backup data to ZIP archive
restore — Restore data from ZIP archive, the Restore point is automatically created
help — display this help screen (? can be used instead of the string help)

Backup Syntax and Switches

avbackup [backup] [-z] [-i]

-z filename for the zip file, can include a path. Enclose in quotes if there are spaces in the string.
-i path and location of the LocalVault.ini file, the INI file details the current location of the Altium Vault to be backed up. Default location of the INI file is C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\

Example

avbackup backup -z "C:\Backups\Altium Vault\201405_Backup.zip" -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\LocalVault.ini"

This will backup the Altium Vault into the file named 201405_Backup.zip, writing the file to the folder C:\Backups\Altium Vault\

NOTES: Any folders specified must already exist. Also, existing files are overwritten if the new file has the same name as an existing file.

Restore Syntax and Switches

avbackup [restore] [-z] [-i]

-z path and filename of the backup zip file. Enclose in quotes if there are spaces in the string.
-i path and location of the LocalVault.ini file, the Vault location specified in the INI file is where the Altium Vault will be restored to. Default location of the INI file is C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault

Example

avbackup restore -z "C:\Backups\Altium Vault\201405_Backup.zip" -i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\LocalVault.ini"

The Function of the Restore Point

The backup tool automatically creates a restore point before commencing to restore the Vault. To do this, the backup tool performs a backup on the existing Vault, and copies the restore ZIP into the following location:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\BackupTool\Backups\

The ZIP is named from the current date and time.

Errors During Backup or Restore

Errors that occur during a backup or restore are written to the file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Altium\Altium Vault\BackupTool\errors.log