Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Implementing LIVE Shadow Backups

Microsoft released a really cool feature in Windows 2003 call Shadow Copies, which allows you to keep an active backup of the files that change on the server in a hidden area and not take up too much space. In the business world I found this feature to be invaluable, and now that in the Church environment, I am finding it to be doubly valuable.

If you have a user that accidentally saves over a file that they open to modify, "you know.... I clicked save when I meant Save AS" -- well normally we have to go get tapes -- load them, blah, blah, blah.

With Shadow Copy enabled drives all you have to do is right click in the server directory ... properties ... and you will find a previous versions tab.


This gives you access to that folder at all the shown points in time. If you double click the folder / file you want, you have options to restore or move to a new location. I can't begin to tell you how many times this has saved me from costly restore operations.




See my next article on how to setup Shadow Backups on your own Windows 2003 File Server.

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