Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

logic_earth — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:00:23 GMT

@Allan

Maybe this will help you.

http://logicearth.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/vista-previous-versions/

Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Luciano Blancato :: BLOG :: — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:46:47 GMT

Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

chakkaradeep — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:12:33 GMT

@caywen, instead of me lending you 15GB of space, why dont you try @Eric F's suggestion to limit the size utilized by the Volume Shadow Service :)

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Allan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:10:11 GMT

I have Previous version but i can't use it because it's blank. When i need to use it i don't see anything it's blank. Sometimes the content will show up when it feel like it. I did the KB thing below but did not work. I'm stuck with blank previous version. I also post this issue in Vista newsgroup no help. Maybe WEI will see this problem and report it.

"Folder versions" list is blank, or you receive a message on Windows Vista: "There are no previous versions available"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937862/en-us

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

someone — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:57:05 GMT

A really powerful features crippled by System Restore from XP and Vista. Why the hell does MS not modify XP so dual boot scenarios are not affected is beyond me. Already, Vista's market share is close to 15%, added to that is the fact that Previous Versions is only included in Business, Enterprise and Ultimate, and then there are users who've Vista but dual-boot between XP. So the actual number of users who'll end up using this powerful and useful feature will be very less, if MS's storage team modified XP so it doesn't delete Windows Vista and later OSes' shadow copies/restore points and vice versa, then Previous Versions will have real potential.

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Eric F — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:42:17 GMT

The VSSAdmin command-line utility can be used to limit the amount of storage that can be used for Volume Shadow Copies.

See http://www.realtime-vista.com/administration/2007/07/resizing_volume_shadow_service.htm

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Quikboy — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:25:22 GMT

Hey, that's a pretty good video! I wasn't aware of that. It looks like a really easy and useful feature.

I'm guessing there's no simple built-in XP, is there? :^(

They should put these on the Windows.com site. Esther does a pretty good job of explaining and showing features.

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

caywen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:00:25 GMT

Shadow Copies was "only" chewing up 15gb on my box, but these reports of it chewing up 40-50gb are alarming.

Isn't there a better way to do this, MS?

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Sarah — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:03:35 GMT

Help! How do I set the shadow copy drive space limit? It's using 40+ Gig from my 200 Gig hard drive. The only help I can find on the Internet is to turn it off, then back on. That would wipe out all my current previous versions and still use a minimum of 15% of my drive space (30 GB). I do not need to use that much space (I only have a few GB of files), but no matter what I do between the Shadow Services and the Indexing, my drive is filling up with Gigs of data. After about 7 months of use, I'd say that Vista is using 30+ Gigs more than my previous XP machine. I'm not doing anything more than I did before, so I think that's nuts.

Any ideas?

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

caywen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:59:45 GMT

chakkaradeep,

What is totally different about version control and previous versions? I understand the UE is different, but they both allow you to recover old versions. It's just that SVN is manual, but you get much more power over what you manually check-in.

Also, seeing that it does not eat huge space on your machine, how about you lend me 15GB of space? :-)

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Korn1699 — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:47:43 GMT

Is there a way to change the amount of space used for shadow copies? I am assuming it uses a percent of the drive. My problem on another computer is that I have two 300 GB VelociRaptor drives set up as RAID 0, but I am only using up about 100 GB, although the shadow copies are taking up 60 GB more. I want to be able to do a backup to my external drive without having 60 extra GB it the file each time.

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

chakkaradeep — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:17:39 GMT

@caywen - svn or cvs is totally different from these things. Regarding space, I dont see it eating up a huge space in my machine.

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

caywen — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:27:02 GMT

I had to turn it off because it was eating some 15GB on my 80GB HD. I found I was down to about 8GB free and wanted to free enough space for about 12GB for videos. I've since upgraded to a 250GB HD, but I fear turning it on and having it chew up 50GB of space.

I much prefer to use a version control system to explicitly track versions of files that I actually care about. For me, using hosted SVN or CVS is way better since you can get your files on any machine anywhere.

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

logic_earth — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:49:21 GMT

Previous Versions interface in not Available in Windows Vista Home. However, versions of your files are stilling being made because Shadow Copy service is on all versions.

You can use a third-party application Shadow Explorer for versions of Vista that do not have an interface.

http://www.shadowexplorer.com/

re: Demo: Previous Versions of files in Windows Vista

Islander — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:12:54 GMT

Indeed an amazing feature. But isn't it only available with Vista Ultimate, Business and Enterprise editions?