How To Enable Shadow Copies On A Drive

If you want to enable shadow copies on a drive which has shares then go through the following steps. This s a useful feature if you would like your users to be able to go back to previous versions of files, for either restores or comparisons.There is a step by step video guide to setting up shadow copies at the end of the article.

1. Start Computer Management by right clicking computer and selecting manage.

2. On the left hand side,, browse to Storage then select Disk Management. Information on your drives will be showin tin the centre details section.

3. Right-click Disk Management > All Tasks >Configure Shadow Copies.

4. Then select the volume to would like to enable shadow copies on.

5. Click Settings to setup how much space you would like shadow copies to use. The more space the better as it means you will be able to keep more data and for longer. You can also setup the schedule here as to when you would like to take your copies. I would recommend daily out of work hours so users can restore a previous days work.

6. Finally select enable and accept the warning.

Restore Shadow Copies Back To  A Drive Or Share

Now presuming you have been running shadow copies for a day or so, you should have some previous version available for restore. To pull back a previous version of a file then do the following from a clients pc.

1.Instruct the user to go to the share where they would like to restore the  previous file versions, then choose Properties >  Previous Versions.

2. If you have been running shadow copies for a while , you will see various version with different dates. Select the version you would like to work with.
3. Then click teither open, save or restore. Open will show you the file there and then to view, copy will allow you to copy the file to a desired area and restore will overwrite the current file with the version you have chosen.

Tags: VSS

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