Shadow Copies for Shared Folders overview

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Shadow Copies of Shared Folders overview

Shadow Copies of Shared Folders provides point-in-time copies of files that are located on shared resources, such as a file server. With Shadow Copies of Shared Folders, you can view shared files and folders as they existed at points of time in the past. Accessing previous versions of your files, or shadow copies, is useful because you can:

  • Recover files that were accidentally deleted. If you accidentally delete a file, you can open a previous version and copy it to a safe location.

  • Recover from accidentally overwriting a file. If you accidentally overwrite a file, you can recover a previous version of the file.

  • Compare versions of file while working. You can use previous versions when you want to check what has changed between two versions of a file.

You can access the server portion of Shadow Copies of Shared Folders through the Shadow Copies tab of the Local Disk Properties dialog box. For more information about how to use Shadow Copies of Shared Folders, see Shadow Copies for Shared Folders How To....

The client software for Shadow Copies of Shared Folders is located on the server and must be deployed to client computers. You can access the client view of shadow copies through the Previous Versions tab of the Properties dialog box of the shared file or folder. For more information about how to deploy Shadow Copies of Shared Folders, see Deploying Shadow Copies for Shared Folders.

Notes

  • Physical access to a server is a high security risk. To maintain a more secure environment, you must restrict physical access to all servers and network hardware.

  • When you restore a file, the file permissions will not be changed. Permissions will remain the same as they were before the restore. When you recover a file that was accidently deleted, the file permissions will be set to the default permissions for the directory.

  • For information on enabling and using shadow copies of shared folders in a server cluster, see Using Shadow Copies of Shared Folders in a server cluster.

  • Creating shadow copies is not a replacement for creating regular backups.

  • When storage area limits are reached, the oldest shadow copy will be deleted and cannot be retrieved.

  • There is a limit of 64 shadow copies per volume that can be stored. When this limit is reached, the oldest shadow copy will be deleted and cannot be retrieved.

  • Shadow copies are read-only. You cannot edit the contents of a shadow copy.

  • You can only enable Shadow Copies of Shared Folders on a per-volume basis; that is, you cannot select specific shared folders and files on a volume to be copied or not copied.