Enabling Shadow Copies on FreeNAS Personal Shares

The aim of this exercise is to create shadow copies on personal FreeNAS shares at a maximum frequency of one every 10 minutes for the last 12 hours. The idea here is that my creative writing tends to be heavy and bursty, occurring over long hours in a single session. It’s on these occasions that I’ve wished I could return to an earlier version created during that session.

The desired number of shadow copies requires 72 snapshots per user (6 snapshots per hour over a 12 hour window). The oldest shapshot will disappear after 12 hours.

If you’ve set up personal shares under a home root, shadow copies will automatically be be available to new users added to the server.

Step 1: Set up periodic snapshots

Set up a periodic snapshot task on the home root. Remember to check Recursive so that separate snapshots of the personal shares under the home root are captured.

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Step 2: Set up the periodic snapshot task for existing personal shares

For each personal share, click Advanced Mode and select the task created under Periodic Snapshot Task .

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That’s it! As you modify documents, shadow copies will become available under the Previous Versions tab when viewing a document’s Properties.

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Note: If shadow copies don’t appear to be working, try restarting the SMB service.

References

  1. Configuring Shadow Copies
  2. Periodic Snapshots
  3. Personal Shares in FreeNAS

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