Manually create shadow copies

One more item for the ever extends fuckup lists of Microsoft, is the poor fact that on the day that you need it, you'll be horror to realize that for what ever mysterious reason, there are no shadow copies for for your drives.

Why is it so - ask Bill.

What to do about it - take things into your own hands: Create the shadow copy on your own, and LOG it so you can easily monitor problems.

How? Guess. Use the good old BATCH files.

Here we go:

1. Click on a drive in the Server 2003 that has your WHS on and go to Properties, Shadow Copies, and DISABLE them all!

2. Copy the code below into a notepad

3. Change to match your computer - add or remove lines for each drive that you have.

4. Save in the same old D:\backup folder as createShadow.cmd

5. Open schedule tasks, create new task, one a day, Run as Administrator, MAKE SURE to enter password.

6. The next day, check the file shadowCopy.log in the D:\backup folder to see if everything is OK.

7. VERIFY your shadow copies: Access your files on the WHS from the network,  like this: \\WHS\Photos. Right click on it, and go to Previous Versions. You should see the a previous version created at the time you've scheduled your createShadow.cmd file to run. Open the previous version and copy some files out.

The code:

@echo off
cls
set target=d:\backup\shadowCopy.log
c:
cd\
echo . >> %target%
echo . >> %target%
echo ****** START SHADOW COPY ****** >> %target%
date /t >> %target%
time /t >> %target%
vssadmin create shadow /for=c: >> %target%
vssadmin create shadow /for=d: >> %target%
vssadmin create shadow /for=f: >> %target%
echo ****** FINISHED SHADOW COPY ****** >> %target%
echo . >> %target%
echo . >> %target%