Recovering Deleted Files on a Network Drive for Windows

If you need to map a network drive for a Windows PC, please refer to the article Mapping Network Drives for Windows

Network drives are backed up on an hourly, daily and weekly basis:

• Hourly backups are created at 5 minutes past the hour and are available for a period of 48 hours in a rolling window from the current time.

• Daily backups are a single instance stored at 12:10AM each day and are held for 14 days (2 weeks) from the current day.

• Weekly backups are stored as of 12:15AM every Sunday and are held for 17 weeks or about 4 months from the current date.

• Backups are not maintained beyond 4 months from the current date due to a lack of space required to keep more than this amount.
  

Step-by-step guide

1. Open Windows File Explorer.

2. Right-click This PC (in the left navigation list) then click Map network drive… from the pop-up menu list.

   

3. Enter the following into the "Map Network Drive” window:

   1. Drive: [select any available letter] – you can press a letter on your keyboard, e.g. “S”.

   2. Folder: \\fileu.uwaterloo.ca\users$\~snapshot.

   3. Uncheck the option of Reconnect at sign-in

   4. Check the option for Connect using different credentials.

   5. Click the Finish button near the bottom-right of the window.

      

4. At the Windows Security authentication prompt window:

   1. Enter: uwaterloo.ca\username (Note: username is your 8 character UWaterloo username, i.e. myuserna)

   2. Type in your password, then press [Enter/return] on your keyboard or click the OK button.
      

      

      
      

5. A new File Explorer window should open. Please be patient, it may take 5-10 seconds.

   1. The backup (snapshot) list is alpha-numerical so “Daily” snapshots are listed at the top, “Hourly” in the middle, and “Weekly” at the bottom.

   2. Do not try to open a folder at this level. Each snapshot contains a listing of ALL usernames with an N-drive (thousands). It will take anywhere from 30 minutes to more than an hour for the list to be complete and for it to show your username. You can wait to see the entire list, but you will only have permission to view the contents of your own.

   3. Read the explanation below (items i to iv) and then use the manual method in step #7 to save yourself from waiting a very long time.

      1. Take a screen shot of the folder names, or be aware of the naming convention for the backup names. Note: the actually backup date and time may not match the precise date and time based on the folder name, but it will be within a day and all backup folder names use these specific patterns.

      2. Daily = “daily.yyyy-mm-dd_0010”

         • Text “daily” a dot, 4-digit year, hyphen, 2-digit month, hyphen, 2-digit day, underscore 0010 (all daily backups are as of 12:10AM EST.)

         • So a daily backup for 2020-Dec-25 will = daily.2020-12-25_0010

      3. Hourly = “hourly.yyyy-mm-dd_tttt”

         • Times for “tttt” will be 24-hour time of the latest 48 hours at 5 past the hour from “0005” for 12:05AM through to “2305” for 11:05PM.

         • Hourly backup for 2020-Dec-25 at 1:05PM = hourly.2020-12-25_1305

      4. Weekly = “weekly.yyyy-mm-dd_0015”

         • Weekly backups from Jan. 2020 are… weekly.2020-01-05_0015, weekly.2020-01-12_0015, weekly.2020-01-19_0015, weekly.2020-01-26_0015, weekly.2020-02-02_0015, and so on… – and are only available while they are among the latest 17 weeks of backups, with the date being a Sunday in the calendar year at 12:15AM or 15 minutes past midnight of Saturday evening into Sunday morning EST.

6. Click on the path bar near the top of the File Explorer window and manually type in a specific snapshot folder along with your username.

   1. Click on the path bar that shows the snapshot.
      

      

   2. Manually type in the date, a backslash, and your username, e.g.: “2020-03-14_0010\username”. (Note: your username is your 8 character UWaterloo username, i.e. myusernam)

      1. Replace username with your own username.

      2. Then press [Enter/return] on your keyboard.
         

         

7. You can now browse your folders and files from that backup date to locate the deleted file.

8. If you can’t locate the file then edit the path bar to view an older backup, either an earlier hour, previous day, or previous week.

9. Copy the file into a location on your computer once you locate it. Open the file to ensure it contains the information you are looking for. You may need to locate another backup copy if the file is blank, corrupt or missing large portions of the data you are looking for.

10. When you are done, right-click on the snapshot share, and then click Disconnect from the pop-up menu list.
    

    

11. Click the Disconnect button for the Cisco AnyConnect VPN application if it is no longer needed.

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