Prerequisites

You must have a CLAS Linux computer account.
Your computer must be connected to the campus network (either wired or wireless).
Restores are only available on NAS (network attached storage) shares mapped via Connecting to network attached storage stored on \\clasnetappvm.iowa.uiowa.edu

Introduction

Network shares or drives are backed up with a unique NetApp technology called Snapshots. The Snapshot feature allows you to recover files and directories that were deleted, corrupted or altered on your network drives with out the intervention of the CLAS Linux Group staff.

A Snapshot is a frozen, hidden, read-only view of files and folders at a specific point in time. The CLAS Linux Group have scheduled a number of different Snapshots to help users with their restore needs as follows:

  1. An hourly Snapshot is taken each hour. 24 hourly Snapshots are available to view.
  2. A nightly Snapshot is taken each night at 12:00AM. 7 nights of nightly Snapshots are available to view.
  3. A weekly Snapshot is taken each Monday at 12:00AM. 4 weeks of weekly Snapshots are available to view.
  4. A monthly Snapshot is taken monthly at 12:00AM.   3 weekly snapshots are available to view.

Instructions:

  1. Right-click "My Computer" and select "Open" from the menu.

     

  2. Right click on a "Network Drive" depending on which files you would like to access and click on "Properties" from the menu. Remember, Snapshots only exist on file shares located on \\clasnetappvm not on \\webedit!

     

  3. Click the "Previous Versions" tab.

     

  4. In the "Previous Versions" window, select the Date/Time of the backup/Snapshot you want to browse to and click "View".

     

  5. Navigate around the files and directories till you find the one you're looking for. Then you can drag and drop it onto your desktop, double click it to open a read-only copy of the file, or use Control+C and Control+V to cut and paste it where you want it restored to.

    If you still can't find the file or directory you're looking for, or are looking for files older than a week or two, faculty and staff can send an email to request@divms.uiowa.edu.