How do shadow copies work?

loss4words

Hi guys,

Sorry if I'm putting this in the wrong section. So I got a call from a user this week who said that he can't create shortcuts on the desktop and when he tries he always gets an error saying that there isn't enough hard drive space available. I thought this was weird so I went to see what the problem really was. Our users save everything to the network drive (Z drive) we have for them and every user is allocated "x" amount of space for them to save stuff. Their "my documents" and "desktop" folders automatically redirect to the Z drive so almost nothing is saved to the local hard drive. I found that the Z drive was full for the user, but I couldn't figure out what took all the space. After doing some searching I found that the "My documents" was being backed up every hour (I found it in the My Documents properties), but I couldn't delete the back ups. I asked one senior technician and he said the file server is not configured to do shadow copies. He suggested I took a look at scheduled items, but thought this was very weird. What do you guys think?

NetAdmin2436

Are you saying shadow copies are being made every hour? You can decrease the interval on how frequently it makes a shadow copy. Or you can decrease the amount of disk space shadow copies use. You basically just right click on the volume drive and choose properties --> shadow copies. Then in there you have your options.

How Shadow Copies for Shared Folders Work: Data Recovery

loss4words

Hi NetAdmin. Thanks for your reply. That's what it looks like - that shadow copies are being made every hour, but the guy at work told me that our file server is not configured to do that, so I found it very weird. I actually don't have access to the servers myself so I can't take a look at what's going on in there. But then again, this is the first time I'm seeing this so it could be that I just don't know what I'm doing.

NetAdmin2436

If you don't have access to log onto the servers, you can still find out if shadow copies are used. Simply right click on the mapped drive and choose properties, then if you see a 'Previous Versions' tab then you know that shadow copies are enabled. In there you should see when the shadow copies were made.

You'd need to log into the servers to be able to change any settings though.

loss4words

Thanks. I'll try this when I get to work tomorrow.