Here is another free video from IT Free Training for Windows 7. In the last video, I looked
at how system protection in Windows 7 could be used to recover your system when it became
unstable or you had software or drivers that you could not uninstall. In this video, I
will look at how system protection can be used to recover documents, either documents
you have deleted by mistake or you want to undo a change.
In previous versions of Windows, you may have used a feature called shadow copies to keep
a history of documents as they changed. In later versions of Windows this is referred
to as previous versions. The system software used to create the previous versions is still
called shadow copies, so sometimes you may see it referenced as configuring shadow copies
in some literature. In Windows 7 previous versions is now part of system protection.
To put it simply, shadow copies has changed its name to previous versions and previous
versions is now part of system protection.
If you have watched our last video, you will remember that previous versions are created
when a restore point is created. By default a restore point is created at start up, midday
or when significant system changes occur.
If multiple restore points are run in the same day, previous version will only save
the first document change. Any restore points that are run after that, previous versions
will not save any more revisions of that document.
Previous versions only saves documents that have been changed. If you save an attachment
from an e-mail or copy a document from a USB flash drive the file has not been changed.
The same applies to documents that are deleted. Unless you modify the document and save it,
previous versions will not save it in its cache.
System protection uses a first in first out cache. The more restore points you create
the more history you will have to restore from but when the cache is full the oldest
data will be removed. If you want to maximize the amount of previous versions you can keep,
you can always increase the amount of cache you have. I will now change to my Windows
7 computer to have a look at previous versions.
First of all I want to check if system protection is configured correctly. To do this, open
the system properties from the start menu. From system, select system protection on the
left hand side.
On the system protection tab, select the c drive and press the button configure. For
previous versions to work ensure that the top option is selected, restore system settings
and previous versions of files. If this setting is not on, then previous versions will not
work.
At the bottom also ensure that disk space usage is set high enough for your needs. The
higher this setting the more previous versions history Windows will be able to save.
Now that I have confirmed that the settings are set up correctly, I will close all these
windows and open Windows Explorer. Under the documents folder on this computer are 3 different
documents.
When I right click one of the files and select the option restore previous versions, you
will notice that there are a number of previous versions that can be used to restore from.
If you want to have a look at the file, you can press the open button. If you are not
sure if it is the correct file or do not want to over write the current file, press the
button copy and copy the file to anywhere you want. If you are sure it is the file that
you want, press the button restore. This will over write the current file.
If the file already exists, it is easy to right click the file and select the option
restore previous versions. But what happens if the file does not exist? I will delete
the file sales figures and then empty the recycle bin to demonstrate how to get the
file back.
To access previous versions for a file that has been deleted, right click on the folder
to access the options. The problem is that when I right click on the documents folder
there is no option for previous versions. This is because the documents folder is a
library. If I open the properties for the library notice at the top there are two folders
in this library. I know the file I am after is the My Documents folder so I will navigate
to the My Documents folder, right click it and select restore previous versions. Now
I can select the previous versions folder for yesterday and select the open option to
view the files.
Now that I have access to the sales figures file, it is a simple matter to copy and paste
it to another location.
Now that I have restored the file, there is one last point I would like to make. If I
right click the file and select restore previous versions, notice that the location of the
file is listed as backup.
This file was copied from another location but was never modified. Since the file was
never modified previous versions never saved the file to its cache. The reason I was able
to recover the file using the previous versions option is that files that are available using
Windows Backup and Restore also appear in the same interface. You can see why previous
versions does not replace the need for regular backups. If I had modified the sales figures
file and previous versions had a chance to run it would be in the previous versions cache.
Previous versions is a great feature for restoring files quickly and correcting some mistakes
fast, but don’t rely on it to replace regular backups.
That’s it for previous versions. In the next video I will look at some recovery options
when you have problematic device drivers on your system. Thanks for watching another free
video from IT Free Training.