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DuoBolt

History and restore

DuoBolt keeps two logs: one of the scans you ran, and one of the operations you performed. The second one can undo itself.

Scan History

Section titled “Scan History”

What you searched, where, and with which settings.

Scan History listing 277 scans, filtered to the last 30 days across both engines. Rows give the time, the engine, the folders searched, what was scanned and the result — wasted space for duplicates, a count to review for similars. The top row is expanded into its setup recap: folders, size range, extensions and matching threshold, with Run again beside it.

Rows are grouped under Today, Yesterday, and then by date, and can be filtered by engine (All / Duplicates / Similars) and by age (All time / Today / 7 days / 30 days / 12 months). Those ages count whole days back from this morning rather than a rolling window, so Today never drags in half of yesterday.

Each row records the setup it used — folders, size range, extensions, options, and for Similars the threshold and group cap — so a scan can be understood months later without guessing. Run again repeats it exactly.

Identical scans collapse into one row marked Repeated ×4 rather than filling the list.

Operations History

Section titled “Operations History”

Everything DuoBolt has moved, deleted, archived or copied.

Operations History listing 36 operations, filtered by engine and by action across All, Trashed, Deleted, Archived and Copied. Rows give the time, the action, what was touched and where it went; two Trashed rows carry a Recovered chip, one reports 1.1 GiB freed, and the older rows are marked Dry run.

Each row gives the date, the action — Trashed, Deleted, Archived or Copied — what it touched, and how much it freed. Rows carry a Recovered chip once their files have been put back.

The action on the right depends on what was done:

  • Review & Restore for anything that moved files away
  • Review archive to open what an archive operation produced
  • Reveal copies for a copy, which removed nothing and so has nothing to undo

Review & Restore

Section titled “Review & Restore”

This is the screen that puts files back.

Review & Restore for a trash operation from Duplicates. The left pane groups the trashed file under its original folder and marks it 1 source available. On the right, What comes back lists size, modified and created dates, permissions and tags, each marked will be restored, and Rebuilt from names the source with a byte-identical chip. The footer offers Restore Selected.

For each file it tells you whether it can be restored, and from where:

  • {n} sources available — DuoBolt has a byte-identical copy to rebuild from
  • Already in place — the file is back, nothing to do
  • No surviving copy — it cannot be restored from within DuoBolt

The detail pane splits into What comes back and Rebuilt from, listing size, modified and created dates, permissions and tags, each marked will be restored. Where the source is byte-identical, it says so.

Select what you want and press Restore Selected.

What cannot be restored

Section titled “What cannot be restored”

Three cases, each with its own explanation on screen rather than a generic failure:

  • A copy operation. It left the originals where they were, so there is nothing to put back.
  • A dry run. Nothing was moved.
  • An operation that moved no files.

How restore actually works

Section titled “How restore actually works”

DuoBolt does not rely on the Trash. When you remove duplicates it records, per group, both the files it acted on and the ones it kept — and a restore rebuilds from a kept copy, verifying it by content hash.

That is why “no surviving copy” is a real state: if you deleted every copy of something, there is nothing left to rebuild from, and DuoBolt says so instead of pretending.

Metadata comes back too. Modification and creation dates, permissions, the read-only flag and extended attributes are captured before anything moves and reinstated on the way back.

Preventing it instead

Protected folders stop files being selectable in the first place.