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How to Restore Archived Objects from Vultr Archival Storage

Updated on 01 April, 2026

Restore archived objects in Vultr using s3cmd with direct download or restore requests for large files.

Archived objects appear with a size of 0 bytes in the bucket. Small objects can be retrieved directly by downloading them. Larger objects require an explicit restore request before they can be downloaded. The default restore window is 7 days.

Follow this guide to restore archived objects using s3cmd.

Note
Replace S3_CONFIG with your s3cmd config file path, BUCKET_NAME with the bucket name, and OBJECT_KEY with the object's path in all commands below.

Restore a small object

For small objects, a standard download triggers retrieval from archive.

console 
$ s3cmd -c S3_CONFIG get s3://BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_KEY

Restore a large object

For larger objects, issue an explicit restore request before downloading. Replace DAYS with the number of days to keep the object available.

console 
$ s3cmd -c S3_CONFIG --restore-days=DAYS restore s3://BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_KEY

If the object is still being retrieved from archive, the following error appears. Wait a few minutes and retry.

ERROR: S3 error: 400 (RequestTimeout): restore is still in progress

Once the restore completes, download the object:

console 
$ s3cmd -c S3_CONFIG get s3://BUCKET_NAME/OBJECT_KEY

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