Windows Administration Resource Kit: Productivity Solutions for IT Professionals

2-17: Reduce Help Desk Calls to Recover Deleted or Overwritten Files

Solution overview

Type of solution	Guidance
Features and tools	Shadow Copies of Shared Folders
Solution summary	Enable Shadow Copies, and provide users a method to recover previous versions of files in shared folders.

Introduction

When a user accidentally deletes or overwrites a file, the support intervention that is required can be significant—locating a backup, mounting the backup, and retrieving the file. Windows Server 2003 introduced the Shadow Copies of Shared Folders feature, which enables point-in-time snapshots of disk volumes, and the Previous Versions client, which allows users to restore files from those snapshots without administrative intervention.

The underlying Shadow ...