Recovery of Windows DFS partion with shadow copy versioned files when overwritten with older modifie

Posted by patjbs on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by patjbs
Published on 2009-08-31T23:31:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/31 10:03 UTC
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I've noticed the following "bug" on a DFS volume with shadow copies:

Pretend you have the following folders/files under shadow copy versioning, going back two weeks.

MyDirectory
+ MyFile - Modified Date 8/1/2009

The current date: 8/30/2009

You have another version of MyFile stored elsewhere, with a modified date of 7/1/2009.

Copy your other version of MyFile into MyDirectory, overwriting the newest version. I expected that you could roll back to the version that was there when it last imaged, say on the prior day and recover your 8/1 version. Not the case. Now, when you go to look at previous versions for the past two weeks, the versioning of that file will be entirely lost, and you'll be stuck with your older 7/1 version. Suckage.

Questions:
(1) Is this intentional, and if so, what's the rationale? I assume that DFS picks up on the versioning based on the current file, and that's what's wiping out prior versions, but it seems like a fairly stupid/naive way of handling versioning to me.
(2) Is there a way to backtrack out of this, without resorting to restoration from other backup mediums?

Thanks!

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