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.
You must be connected to the Cisco AnyConnect VPN in order to map your network drive off-campus. For more instructions on how to connect to the VPN, click here.
Step-by-step guide
Open the Finder app
Click Go (on the menu bar at the upper-left of your display) then click Connect to Server… from the drop-down menu list.
Enter the following network share path into the Connect to Server window:
smb://fileu.uwaterloo.ca/users$/~snapshot
Then click the Connect button at the lower-right of the window
If prompted, click Connect again to continue. This message appears the first time you connect to the server.
You will be prompted to enter your name and password for the server.
Select the Registered User option.
Name: enter your 8 character UWaterloo username (ie. j25rober) and your password.
Click "Remember this password in my keychain” as your credentials are used to access another subfolder on this drive in step 7.
Click Connect.
Drive: [select any available letter] – you can press a letter on your keyboard, e.g. “S”
Folder: \\fileu.uwaterloo.ca\users$\~snapshot
Uncheck the option of Reconnect at sign-in.
Check the option for Connect using different credentials
Click the Finish button near the bottom-right of the window
At the Windows Security authentication prompt window:
Enter: uwaterloo.ca\username (replace “username” with your 8 character UWaterloo username (ie. j25rober))
Type in your password, then press [Enter/return] on your keyboard or click the OK button.
A new File Explorer window should open. Please be patient, it may take 5-10 seconds.
The backup (snapshot) list is alpha-numerical so “Daily” snapshots are listed at the top, “Hourly” in the middle, and “Weekly” at the bottom.
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.
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.
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.
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 = 2020-12-25_0010
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 = 2020-12-25_1305
Weekly = “weekly.yyyy-mm-dd_0015”
Weekly backups from Jan. 2020 are… 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.
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.
Click on the path bar that shows the snapshot
Manually type in the date, a backslash, and your username, e.g.: “2020-03-14_0010\username”
Replace “username” with your own WatIAM userid.
Then press [Enter/return] on your keyboard.
You can now browse your folders and files from that backup date to locate the deleted file.
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.
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.
When you are done, right-click on the snapshot share, and then click Disconnect from the pop-up menu list.
Click the Disconnect button for the Cisco AnyConnect VPN application if it is no longer needed.
Related articles
Need help?
Contact the IST Service Desk online or 519-888-4567 ext. 44357.
Article feedback
If you’d like to share any feedback about this article, please let us know.