This is the third post in a series that describes clincher arguments for preferring Small Business Server 2003 rather then Windows XP as a file server for a small businesses. Today we will feature Shadow Copies.

One of the major benefits of installing a file server is that all important data is brought together in one place for the purposes of backup. Your backups serve to get you out of trouble following disasters, major and minor. A major disaster could be the physical failure of the hard drive. A minor disaster could be that an individual file has been overwritten, accidentally deleted or corrupted. In the latter case the file could be restored from the latest backup, but that generally requires the involvement of someone with expertise and knowledge of the backup program. Shadow Copies allow users to perform this function themselves.

Shadow Copies can be enabled on any volume on a Small Business Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 server. Once enable then a user-defined schedule is established to copy files to a reserved area on the volume. Up to 64 previous versions of any one file can be stored.

Shadow Copies are read-only but can be restored when the original file has been lost or corrupted. A small piece of client software is required. This is installed by default on Windows XP SP2 or the setup can be found at \\%systemroot%\system32\clients\twclient. Once this is done the client will be able to access previous versions of files on shadow copied shared folders through the "Previous Versions" tab on the file's Properties dialogue box.

To emphasise, Shadow Copies should not be regarded as a replacement for a well-defined backup policy.

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