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This entry has been published on 2017-10-23 and may be out of date.

Last Updated on 2017-10-23.

[:en]From Windows 8 upwards, for some reason Microsoft decided to neglegt the original VSS shadow copies and and recommend the File History feature.

For me this is not an option, as you need an additional HDD (or network drive). In my opinion, a regular full or incremental data backup is more useful in my opinion, and I would like to re-enable VSS for quick and simple file recoveries of my local drive.

The shadow copy configuring dialog is not availaible any more unfortunately, but there is a way how you can manually enable and configure the original shadow copies – via the WMI command:

wmic shadowcopy call create Volume=c:\

Running this command will create a shadow copy of your current data. You will find a new entry if you e.g. right-click a drive or directory and select “Restore previous versions”.

To run it e.g. every day, create a simple scheduled task which runs the command

wmic

with parameters:

shadowcopy call create Volume=c:\

 

Note: If it does not work, you might have to re-enable your Shadow Copy Windows Service via Windows Service Settings (set startup type to Automatic).

 

 [:]