NinjaOne Backup — Restore Fails: No Data Available & Device Not in Drop-Down
Audience: T1 / T2 Use when: A restore attempt fails with "No data available," the destination device isn't appearing in the restore-to dropdown, or the restore fails to start.
"No Data Available" on the Restore Page
This message appears when NinjaOne can't find backup data to display for the selected device.
Causes and fixes:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| No successful backups have ever run | Check backup job history — has any backup completed? Set up and run the backup first |
| Selected date range has no backups | Adjust the date range in the restore UI to include dates when backups did run |
| Wrong revision selected | Try a different revision timestamp |
| Backup data was deleted | Check if backup data was manually purged or if the NAS repository was deleted |
| Cloud data not yet synced after a new backup | Wait 10–15 minutes after a successful backup before restoring |
| Device backup was disabled and re-enabled | First new backup after re-enabling must complete before restores are available |
# Confirm a backup ran successfully — check NinjaOne Activity log
# NinjaOne → device → Activities → filter by "Backup"
# Look for "Backup job completed" entries with timestamps
Device Not Appearing in the Restore-To Dropdown
This is one of the most common restore stumbling blocks. NinjaOne restricts cross-device restore to devices within the same organization.
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| New machine not in the dropdown | New machine is in a different org or not yet enrolled | Move new machine to the same org as the backup source |
| Replaced machine shows old device name | Old device record still in NinjaOne | Use the old record for restore; move new device if needed |
| Device just moved to this org | NinjaOne may take a few minutes to recognize it | Wait 5 minutes and refresh |
How to move a device temporarily: NinjaOne → find the target device → right-click or gear icon → Move to Organization → select the org that holds the backup → confirm. After restore, move it back.
Restore Fails to Start
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "Restore failed to initialize" | Lockhart not running on destination device | Start Lockhart on the target device |
| Progress bar appears then disappears | Network interruption during restore initiation | Retry; check connectivity |
| "Unable to find recovery partition" after image restore | Different hardware / partition ID changed | See Image Restore page — reagentc fix |
| Restore starts but shows 0% for hours | Very large image on slow cloud connection | Consider local NAS source; confirm download is actually in progress |
Checking Restore Progress
When a restore is in progress, Lockhart on the target device is doing the heavy lifting. Check its status:
# Is Lockhart actively running on the restore target?
Get-Process | Where-Object {$_.Name -like "*lockhart*"} |
Select Name, CPU, @{N='MemMB';E={[math]::Round($_.WorkingSet/1MB,1)}}
# Check network activity during restore (should be sustained download)
Get-NetAdapterStatistics | Select Name, ReceivedBytes, SentBytes
If No Backups Exist at All
If a device has never successfully backed up and data is lost: NinjaOne cannot help recover it. This is the "a backup that was never tested isn't a backup" scenario. See the Monthly Health Verification Checklist page for how to prevent this.