Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate - (Part 3) Shadow-Copy
Vista Ultimate includes a feature called Shadow-Copy which automatically takes snapshots of different versions of the files you save. This allows you to easily get a version back incase you delete one. This feature is also available in Server 2003 and I can't believe how many times this saved me when a user would delete a network share.
We can add this feature to Vista Home Premium by installing the free utility Filehamster. Filehamster will run in the background and keep track of your files and directories you set it for. Installation is quick and easy. An easy setup wizard starts up initially.
Choose the location of where you want to store the backup files.
Then just name the backup library. Don’t worry, you can make as many libraries as you wish after the initial wizard set up.
Now let’s go ahead and set up a directory to manage with Filehamster. Go to the watch file we just created, right click, and choose Add File or Directory. For my example I am going to use my music directory.
You will be prompted to browse to a specific location. I chose the entire directory. You can also watch changes to individual files.
Next we can enter in various watching parameters depending upon how sensitive the directory is. Being in a band I make a lot of changes to my music folder adding different recordings, tabs, lyrics, etc. So I want to keep dibs on everything.
Choose the files to have initially copied. You can choose as much or as little as you think is appropriate.
Ok, here is my watch tree as of the initial revision. As I mentioned Filehamster runs in the background and keeps an eye on and monitors all changes to this directory. You can add as many files and / or directories you wish.
Recovering files using Filehamster is as slick as using Shadow-Copy in Server 2003. There are also plenty of add-ons for additional functionality for this cool utility as well.
Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate Part 1
Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate Part 2
Disclaimer: Many of our articles require making changes to your system. While we fully test and stand by our advice, there is still the potential for problems when making any configuration changes. Please be careful.
Works on Business too?
NP…It's found in Business as well. Maybe you should update your post.
This is interesting. The previous app I had found was called shadowexplorer, and while it definitely worked, this one seems a lot more user friendly. The only thing I like better than FileHamster is that since Volume Shadow Copy is enabled by default on all versions of Vista (I think), shadowexplorer doesn't need to run in the background, it just reads the backups that Vista automatically makes for the entire system. The nice thing about FileHamster is that I can specify what I want to keep backed up, which will save a lot of hard drive space. =)
Actully all editons of Vista with System Restore have shadow copies as System Restore is dependent on it. The GUI for restoring files is just missing in some editions. There is program you can use to restore files from it.
See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/recover-files-with-shadow-copies-on-any-version-of-windows-vista/
How about a free app to replace Windows Fax and Scan???
Do any of the files in this series make up for the additional networking features in Vista Ultimate? I was told by my school that I will need to upgrade to Business or Ultimate to get on the network at school. Is this really necessary? Thanks in advance!
Where can I read Par1 and Part 2?
Seems to be absolute perfect app.I recently purchased new laptop and will try it to upgrade its feature using this app.
Mike,
you can find the parts 1 & 2 at the following link
http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mysticgeek/category/windows/vista/
Jim
Kevin, there is an updated version of Shadow Explorer available - 0.3 now and my write-up was for 0.1. You may find that one easier to use http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html
Is File Hamster accessing the files created by Vista, or creating a duplicate set? If duplicate, then can someone explain how to turn off the ShadowCopy file creation in Vista, as it would be a waste of resources to have both programs essentially doing the same thing.