Weblog entry #9 for mcortese
See all weblog entries made by mcortese.
I was struck today by yet another Windows feature. A collegue running XP copied a file from a shared directory to his local disc. Then he heavily modified what he thought his copy. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that the original file had been modified as well!
What had happened?
He failed to realize that what he copied actually was just a link to the real thing. On NTFS if you copy a link, you get a link. If you then act on this link, you are really acting on the real thing.
Too bad, the original file now is lost forever, and the collegue has learned a precious lesson!
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In this case, neither shadow copy nor backup were viable.
The former because it requires control of the whole volume, which users don't have.
The latter because at my site backups run overnight, so they cannot protect you against harm you do to yourself during daytime.
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