Retrieving Images, Videos and Other Assets from Backup with Cloudinary’s Management Console

Sometimes, you may need to access an asset, such as an image, that is not the current version. Thanks to Cloudinary’s extensive backup system, it is easy to retrieve your previous iterations.

This tutorial shows you how to use Cloudinary's Management Console to retrieve an asset version from backup. For more details on Cloudinary's full backup capabilities, please take a look at our documentation.

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Tutorial Sections

• Watch a Video
• Enabling Backups in your Cloudinary Account
• Finding & Restoring Your Deleted Assets
• Retrieving an Asset Version from Backup
• Additional Resources

Watch a Video

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Enabling Backups in your Cloudinary Account

Cloudinary starts storing asset versions only after you enable the Automatic Backup feature.

Please review our tutorial on this process, especially if you have not already enabled backups or if you want to ensure you have correctly done so.

If you are trying to restore an asset version that was overwritten before enabling backups, please send us a request ticket. Our Customer Success team will work with you to determine your options.

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Finding & Restoring Your Deleted Assets

To see your deleted assets, navigate to the Media Library’s search bar, click on the "Add more" button and choose "Delivery types".

Now choose "Deleted assets":

Accessing and Restoring a Deleted Asset 

Once you find your asset, select it, and click on the "Restore" button. Note that previews aren't supported for deleted assets, so it's important to make sure you’re selecting the right file. You can do this by double-checking its public ID and file format (e.g. JPG, PNG, PDF, MP4, etc.) from the available assets.

Options for Assets Deleted via 'Bulk Delete'

Whether you are using Cloudinary’s Admin API or the Management Console, you can delete all of your assets in bulk.

Bulk deleting can be very handy when trying to remove a large number of assets with a simple action. However, it is also a very intense action that's complicated to retroactively restore. If you do find that you need to bring back assets that were deleted via our Bulk Delete functionality, send us a support request ticket. From there, our Customer Success team can evaluate your options.

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Retrieving an Asset Version from Backup

Note: The following steps for retrieving asset versions from backup apply for all of our storage options - Cloudinary, Amazon S3, and Google Storage.

You can use our Upload API's download_backup method or Admin API's restore method(either by public ID or asset ID) to restore one or more assets from the backup.

For More information, please refer to 

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/image_upload_api_reference#download_backup

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/admin_api#restore_resources (By Public ID(s))

https://cloudinary.com/documentation/admin_api#restore_resources_by_asset_id (By Asset ID(s))

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Feel free to open a support ticket if you have any questions about this process. We’re here to help you be successful with your projects.

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