NOTE:
To check the cluster size of a volume, use the
fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo
command. To change the
cluster size on a volume that contains data, back up the data on the volume, reformat it using the new
cluster size, and then restore the data.
Mounted drives
A mounted drive is a local volume attached to an empty folder (called a mount point) on an NTFS
volume. When enabling shadow copies on a volume that contains mounted drives, the mounted drives
are not included when shadow copies are taken. In addition, if a mounted drive is shared and shadow
copies are enabled on it, users cannot access the shadow copies if they traverse from the host volume
(where the mount point is stored) to the mounted drive.
For example, assume there is a folder
F:\data\users
, and the
Users
folder is a mount point for
G:\
. If shadow copies are enabled on both
F:\
and
G:\
,
F:\data
is shared as
\\server1\data
,
and
G:\data\users
is shared as
\\server1\users
. In this example, users can access previous
versions of
\\server1\data
and
\\server1\users
but not
\\server1\data\users
.
Managing shadow copies
The vssadmin tool provides a command line capability to create, list, resize, and delete volume shadow
copies.
The system administrator can make shadow copies available to end users through a feature called
“Shadow Copies for Shared Folders.” The administrator uses the Properties menu (see
Figure 5
) to
turn on the Shadow Copies feature, select the volumes to be copied, and determine the frequency
with which shadow copies are made.
File server management
34
