It would be a bit of a step back if it was disbaled in Vista since it was present in XP !!
Assuming Vista uses VSC in the same way as XP it shouldn't cause excessive disk activity (in fact it shouldn't cause any at all because until you use it there should be no file monitoring going on).-Carol Haynes
The article read otherwise, in that Vista needs to scan files for changes:
With the virtual copy of your HD shadow copies has created, previous versions will simply check each and every file if it has changed since it was last backed up. If so, a backup copy is saved. This will also be true for directories but only changes will be saved.
If that is done on a schedule, it is still going to cause some overhead, especially when those backed up versions cannot be accessed unless you buy a new OS or specific 3rd-party app.
I forget now, but thought volume shadow copy service was set to manual in XP by default so it is not running until it is activated in some way.
-nontroppo
Backup has to scan files for change if you are doing an incremental or differential backup - how else is it going to do it? The only reason Backup should cause disk chattering when you are not actually performing a backup is if Vista Backup tries to continually keep tabs on which files have changed since last backup - but that is not the way MS has done it in the past (they simply marked files with an attribute to say it needed backing up) and I'd be surprised if that has been introduced with Vista as it is a pretty stupid way of doing it!
VSC doesn't have anything to do with that (or at least it didn't in XP) as it is purely to enable backing up files that are in use. AIUI the way it works in XP is that at the time a backup is requested it redirects all disc writes during the backup process to alternate versions of files that are in use which are maintained by VSC and when the backup completes up to date versions of those files are written back to disk so that you don't lose data. That way VSC stops the data you are backing up from being altered whilst the backup is running but still allows you to carry on working on your system while the backup is still incomplete. The backup will consist of files in the state they were at when VSC was initiated (ie. the start of the backup process) all changes to files on your disc during the backup are not backed up until next time you do a backup. (Sorry that got a bit convoluted but I think it makes sense - just).
Consequently the only time VSC should actually be doing anything is during the backup process - and even then it only maintains copies of files that are in use - disc activity should be minimal unless you choose to pound your system during a backup process.
Now if you schedule a backup the hard disc will chatter away throughout - how else can it do a backup?
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