Hello Everyone, 

The following article, by Neil Randall, describes how to configure Microsoft Windows to automatically save multiple versions of files.

Enjoy,

Mark

CONTROLLING SHADOW COPIES IN VISTA (AND WINDOWS 7!)
by Neil Randall

If you’ve never heard of Windows’ Volume Shadow Copy Service, you’re not alone. But master this handy feature and you’ll be able to archive multiple versions of files automatically and without confusion. 

Shadow Copies is the informal term for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), also known as “Previous Versions.” All three names point to the same feature: the automatic saving of copies of files. The purpose of the service is to allow you to restore these backups of files that you have lost for any reason—file corruption, for example. VSS works in conjunction with both System Restore and Windows Backup. If it’s properly set up, simply right-click a file name from within Windows Explorer and choose Restore Previous Versions to access this feature. Vista—or Windows 7, for those already using the beta of Microsoft’s new OS—will open the Properties dialog for the selected file or folder, and from there you’ll select the previous version you want to restore. Some users won’t have to set up VSS, but in case your system isn’t already configured to save versions of files, here’s how to get started.

Set Up Shadow Copies
 
Since Previous Versions works on volumes, you have to tell Vista which volumes you want to track. Open the System Control Panel and click System Protection in the menu on the left. In the resulting dialog, check the drives you want to shadow; the more you check, the more drive space the feature will use. The best option is to shadow drives containing your data files and anything else you can’t replace by another method.

Precise configuration of the Previous Versions feature takes place not via this dialog box, but rather using a command line utility called VSSadmin. Unfortunately, you can access this utility only in the Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate versions of Vista, not the other versions. If you can access it, however, it gives you control over viewing and modifying your shadowed volumes.

Run VSSadmin by opening a command window, but doing so as Administrator. Click Start, type cmd, then right-click cmd.exe and choose Run as Administrator. In the resulting command window, type vssadmin to reveal the possible commands:

List Providers List registered volume shadow copy providers
List Shadows List existing volume shadow copies
List Shadow Storage List volume shadow copy storage associations
List Volumes List volumes eligible for shadow copies
List Writers List subscribed volume shadow copy writers

List Providers lets you see which software has been registered on your system for manipulating shadows, including any third-party programs. The default is Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0. List Writers gives you a list of the software that interacts with VSS to keep the shadows consistent and up to date—here you see a Registry writer, a system writer, a search service writer, and more. The other three List options provide an array of data about the shadows existing on your system.

To see the shadows and disk usage of your system’s volumes, type vssadmin list shadowstorage. Vista responds with a list of all the shadow copies it can find, in the following format:

Shadow Copy Storage association
For volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{ba406d28-f092-11dc-b3d7-806e6f6e6963}\
Shadow Copy Storage volume: (C:)\\?\Volume{ba406d28-f092-11dc-b3d7-806e6f6e6963}\
Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 11.569 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 12.085 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 13.141 GB

Here we see the volume being shadowed (the C: drive in this case) and the used, allocated, and maximum space for the shadow copy. On this system, C: is a 90GB partition, so 13GB is a reasonable amount of space, but you can restrict the allocation by using the vssadmin command with a few specified attributes. As an example, to reduce the maximum storage space for drive C: to 6GB, enter the following command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=6GB

Be careful when changing the size of a shadow, however. If you reduce it below the current usage for that volume, Vista will delete as many folders/files as it needs to obey your command. These are deleted by date starting with the oldest, but it still might result in an unpleasant surprise if you try to restore data later.

For the most part, as with many other system configurations, letting Vista handle the details works just fine. When you want to take further control, however, learning VSSadmin can be a worthwhile venture.

Restoring Previous Versions
With VSS set up—and again, most users will find their systems set up out of the box—restoring an older version of a file begins with a simple right-click on the file in question, in an Explorer window. From the context menu, select Restore Previous Versions to see what’s available.
 
Depending on whether you’ve searched for a folder or a file, Vista gives you a different response. For a file, when you click Restore…, Vista displays the Copy File dialog, asking if you want to replace the existing version or rename the restored version so that the existing and the restored files can coexist in the same folder.
 
When you click Restore… for a folder, however, an ominous warning dialog pops up, telling you that if you proceed, you’ll be irrevocably replacing the existing folder with the restored folder.
 
Obviously, this isn’t a decision to be made lightly—what’s more, you needn’t make it at all. From the Previous Versions dialog for a folder, you can open the folder and drag the files from inside to anywhere you wish—even into running programs. For this reason, if you know the approximate date for the file you’re looking for, you should work with folders rather than individual files when you wish to restore.

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