Storage and backup

Disks, file systems, shadow copies and backup: VSS, wbadmin, diskpart, fsutil, chkdsk and NTFS links.

fsutil 8dot3name: the files strip silently skips

Every file created on an NTFS volume with 8.3 name creation left on gets two names, not one. There is the long…

How to create a persistent VSS shadow copy with diskshadow, expose it as a drive letter, script it in a .dsh file, and delete it without collateral.

wbadmin is the command line front end to Windows Server Backup. It creates one off and scheduled backups, restores volumes, files, applications…

Almost every backup on Windows is taken from a shadow copy rather than from the live volume. The Volume Shadow Copy Service…

Most administrators meet fsutil exactly once, in a forum answer that says to run fsutil hardlink list or fsutil dirty query, and…

Most of what administrators know about chkdsk was true in 2005. Run it with /f /r, reboot, watch a progress percentage for…

Most disk operations in Windows can be done through the graphical Disk Management tool. But there are situations where the GUI refuses…

Many games store save files in a fixed local path with no built-in cloud sync option. If you reinstall Windows, switch machines,…

Some applications write gigabytes of cache, logs, and profile data to C:\Users\John\AppData - with no built-in option to change that location. On…

Symbolic links and junctions are invisible in normal directory listings - they appear as regular folders or files in File Explorer and…