VSS Snapshot Access with mount points

Question

Hello community,

got a bit of a unusual scenario, not expecting a solution but just in case should someone have played around with it before me happy about past experience :)

we use a fileserver, which has a volume assigned with a drive letter (D:), in this drive, there is a folder called "projects", which is shared. inside this projects folder, there are various volumes mounted as folder mount points. those mounted volumes have vss snapshots enabled.

however, for clients, when they access \fileserver\projects\mountedvolume, they don't have access to previous copies. is there a way to expose those snapshots to the enduser (so the enduser can restore themself) with the previous version gui? (i can access the snapshots with vssadmin on the fileserver)

Fileserver in this scenario was windows 2019, client windows 2022.

thanks

Florian

Answer 1

Hi Florian,

Hope you're doing well.

It is possible to expose VSS snapshots to end-users so that they can restore the previous versions themselves. However, it requires some technical knowledge and effort. Here are some possible ways to achieve this:

1. PowerShell: You can use PowerShell to create a symlink to the VSS snapshot and then map it to a drive letter. This will allow end-users to access the snapshot as if it were a regular folder.

Here is an example command to create a symlink:

mklink /d C:\shadowcopy "\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy"

After this, you can map the symlink to a drive letter using the Windows GUI.

2. Windows Previous Versions: If you have enabled the "Windows Previous Versions" feature on your file server, end-users can use the "Previous Versions" tab in the "Properties" dialog of a file or folder to restore previous versions. However, this feature is only available on the NTFS file system and requires some configuration.

For further query this issue, we suggest you to go to the Microsoft Customer Service Center to open a Premier-level case so that with their permission level and resource, Microsoft could provide you with better help on your request.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions.

Best Regards,

Ian Xue

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