Accessing network folder backups or "snapshots"

microwave backup network-files snapshot

What are Snapshots?

Information Technology automatically takes incremental, point-in time backups, called snapshots, for many locations on Microwave, the college's network file storage location, throughout the day. We also take and keep the last five days and then a single week's worth of snapshots so that you can access backups up to a week old.

The backups work as follows:

A snapshot is taken at hour 0 (named hourly.0). An hour later, the hourly.0 snapshot is moved to hourly.1 and then another snapshot is taken. This progresses through hourly.13.
Hourly.13 is converted into nightly.0 and the process starts again at the hourly.0. On day 2 the nightly.0 is copied to nightly.1 and the new hourly.13 is converted to nightly.0. This progresses through nightly.4 when it becomes weekly.0. When weekly.0 ages out, the previous snapshots are removed and the cycle continues.

Snapshots vary depending on the network location. Your home directory on Microwave, and your department directories, backup on the schedule above.

Some storage locations have data that changes much less frequently. These locations may have different schedules so if you are accessing data outside of the two previously mentioned locations and would like to know the backup schedule, contact the Service Desk.

Accessing the snapshots

MacOS

You can access the snapshots through Apple's Finder by mounting a new location to the network. The process is the same for each location you'd like to browse to however we've provided the steps for the department drive and personal drive locations on Microwave.

Department Drive

From the Finder menu, click on Go - Connect to Server
Enter the path to your department drive and add "~snapshot" to the end, similar to the this: smb://microwave/dept/department_name/~snapshot where department_name is the network name of your department. In the screenshot below we show you accessing the snapshots for the IT department location which is named ccenter.
Click Connect
If prompted, enter your Bowdoin username and password.
A new Finder window will open showing you a list of available snapshot folders.
You can browse through the folders looking like any other. Once you locate the item you'd like to restore, simply copy it to the current, live, network folder overwriting any existing version if you want to replace it.

Personal Drive

The instructions for your personal network drive are similar except for the location of mounting the folder.

From the Finder menu, click on Go - Connect to Server
Enter the path to your personal network space and add "~snapshot" to the end similar to the following: smb://microwave/home/username/~snapshot where username is your Bowdoin username.
Click "Connect"
If prompted, enter your Bowdoin username and password.
A new Finder window will open showing you a list of available snapshot folders.
You can browse through the folders looking like any other. Once you locate the item you'd like to restore, simply copy it to the current, live, network folder overwriting any existing version if you want to replace it.

Windows

You can access the snapshots from Windows by utilizing a feature built in to the operating system itself.

Browse to the location where you'd like to restore a file or folder for. This could be your personal network space (H: drive), your department space (J: drive) or many other microwave locations.
Once you're at the folder you'd like to restore an item for, right-click on the folder and choose Properties. Note: you can only browse to restore items at the folder level. If you have an item inside of a folder you'd like to restore, browse to the parent folder (you might have to go up a level).
From the Properties window, click on the Previous Versions tab. From here you will see a list of backups and the times they were taken. Double-click on any of the folders to open the backup location. You can browse through the folders looking like any other. Once you locate the item you'd like to restore, simply copy it to the current, live, network folder overwriting any existing version if you want to replace it.