10.3. Shadow Copies (aka Previous Versions)

The idea behind Shadow Copies is awesome: preserve some number of copies of the user's precious files on the server. When the user performs a CLM (Career-Limiting Move) by deleting a file or overwriting a file with data that cannot be undone, they can simply get that file back from a point in time. Microsoft's code name for this feature was Time Warp, and I think that pretty much says it all.

Technically, the system doesn't precisely store "copies" of a file, it preserves a "point-in-time" copy of a file—not a copy of all the bytes that compose the entire file. Sometimes, this magic is referred to as Snapshots, though, technically again, it's not a direct bitwise snapshot of the file.

There are two ...

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