Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Working with Shadow Copy
Source Taken from www.windowsnetworking.com
Working with Shadow Copy
The Volume Shadow Copy Service is more of a convenience feature rather than an alternative to backups. The reason for this is that shadow copy data resides on the same volume as the original data. Therefore, if the volume became corrupt then there would be no way or restoring shadow copy backups. You would have to rely on a traditional tape backup instead.
Another limitation to shadow copy backups is that they only work if Windows is functional. For example, if Windows crashed due to a corrupt registry then Windows would not be functional. You would therefore have to restore Windows from a traditional backup rather than from a shadow copy backup.
Still another limitation is that shadow copy backups are designed to restore one file at a time. Because of this, shadow copy backups are not suitable for restoring large numbers of files.
These limitations do not mean that shadow copy backups are useless though. On the contrary. If a user needs to revert to a previous version of a file then a shadow copy backup will allow them to restore a previous version without involving you. You don’t have to configure a restore operation, you don’t have to mount a tape, you don’t have to do anything at all.
Working with Shadow Copy
The Volume Shadow Copy Service is more of a convenience feature rather than an alternative to backups. The reason for this is that shadow copy data resides on the same volume as the original data. Therefore, if the volume became corrupt then there would be no way or restoring shadow copy backups. You would have to rely on a traditional tape backup instead.
Another limitation to shadow copy backups is that they only work if Windows is functional. For example, if Windows crashed due to a corrupt registry then Windows would not be functional. You would therefore have to restore Windows from a traditional backup rather than from a shadow copy backup.
Still another limitation is that shadow copy backups are designed to restore one file at a time. Because of this, shadow copy backups are not suitable for restoring large numbers of files.
These limitations do not mean that shadow copy backups are useless though. On the contrary. If a user needs to revert to a previous version of a file then a shadow copy backup will allow them to restore a previous version without involving you. You don’t have to configure a restore operation, you don’t have to mount a tape, you don’t have to do anything at all.
# posted by David Low @ 9:35 AM 
