---
title: How to restore a backup
---
## Extract

When the worst happens—or you want to test your backups—the first step is
to figure out which archive to restore. A good way to do that is to use the
`--list` action:

```bash
borgmatic --list
```

That should yield output looking something like:

```text
host-2019-01-01T04:05:06.070809      Tue, 2019-01-01 04:05:06 [...]
host-2019-01-02T04:06:07.080910      Wed, 2019-01-02 04:06:07 [...]
```

Assuming that you want to restore the archive with the most up-to-date files
and therefore the latest timestamp, run a command like:

```bash
borgmatic --extract --archive host-2019-01-02T04:06:07.080910
```

The `--archive` value is the name of the archive to restore. This extracts the
entire contents of the archive to the current directory, so make sure you're
in the right place before running the command.


## Repository selection

If you have a single repository in your borgmatic configuration file(s), no
problem: the `--extract` action figures out which repository to use.

But if you have multiple repositories configured, then you'll need to specify
the repository path containing the archive to extract. Here's an example:

```bash
borgmatic --extract --repository repo.borg --archive host-2019-...
```

## Restore particular files

Sometimes, you want to restore a single deleted file, rather than restoring
everything from an archive. To do that, tack on one or more `--restore-path`
values. For instance:

```bash
borgmatic --extract --archive host-2019-... --restore-path /path/1 /path/2
```

Like a whole-archive restore, this also restores into the current directory.


## Related documentation

 * [Set up backups with borgmatic](../../docs/how-to/set-up-backups.md)
 * [Inspect your backups](../../docs/how-to/inspect-your-backups.md)