The TimeTraveler installation program restarts Windows Explorer and opens up a new
Explorer window with your Documents folder. At this point, Explorer is
configured to load TimeTraveler bar automatically. You can change this by
pressing the Auto-Load button, the turquoise button left to the timeline. See
figure 1. The button will turn gray indicating that auto-load feature is
disabled. Next time you open an Explorer window, it will not load
TimeTraveler. In this case, you can get it loaded by pressing Control-T. The
key sequence acts as a toggle load-unload.
Press the activation button located at the bottom-left corner of TimeTraveler
to activate or deactivate TimeTraveler. This will bring up the activation
form. The color of the button indicates its status. It is amber during the
trial period, gray when it is not activated and green when it is activated.
The main element of TimeTraveler is its timeline populated with time markers
called points-in-time. Each point-in-time represents a file system snapshot for
the explored drive. If Explorer address is not referring to a fixed and local
drive, the timeline will not contain any point-in-time. No points-in-time are
available for removable storage like CD or DVD and for shared folder hosted by a
remote machine. Snapshots are generated by Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy
service. The timeline ranges from the time of the first snapshot to the
current time. TimeTraveler is updated periodically and displays any newly
created or deleted snapshot. You can trust TimeTraveler to accurately reflect
the state of the explored drive. The timeline offers a rich set of information
and functionality explained in details in the Timeline page.
Figure 1: TimeTraveler components
TimeTraveler Overview
You can time travel by moving the Time Cursor to a point-in-time. At load time,
TimeTraveler is set at the current time as indicated by the Timeline Title and
the Time Cursor pointing to the rightmost time marker, the purple one. In this
case, Windows Explorer displays the file system as it normally does when
TimeTraveler is not present. Figure 1 shows Explorer at the current time. The
address bar is set to:
F:\work\BOTL\TimeTraveler\Help
Moving the Time Cursor to a point-in-time causes TimeTraveler to display the
file system as it was at the traveled time. The Timeline Title is changed to
display the traveled time and the path in the Explorer address bar is changed to
refer to the current folder at the traveled time. The changed path in figure 2
is:
This path can easily be deciphered. The turquoise portion is a folder
created by TimeTraveler that serves as a mount point for shadow copies, or
points-in-time. The yellow portion is a folder created to host sub-folders for
the explored drive. The pink portion is a folder named after the GMT time of
the point-in-time. Finally the green portion is the path being explored. From
there, you are browsing the file system exactly as it was at the selected
point-in-time as long as you stay under
C:\BearsOnTheLoose\F$\@GMT-2009.07.28-02.00.01. Note that if the current folder
did not exist at the traveled time then Explorer will be set to the closest
ancestor that existed at the time.
When TimeTraveler is set on a point-in-time, the Timeline title is fixed and
only non-modifying operations are allowed on the files and folders. This is
because the shadow copies are inherently read-only. However you can use all
read-only operations provided by Windows Explorer and its adds-on. This makes
TimeTraveler very powerful.
Figure 2: TimeTraveler at a point-in-time
TimeTraveler Overview
Just above the timeline, on the left, the name of the Explorer
selection is displayed. It is the list view (Explorer right hand side)
selection if it exists or the folder view (Explorer left hand side) selection
otherwise.
Right to the Timeline is the configuration button. Pressing it
brings up the Configuration form. Using this form you can configure the storage
associated with shadow copies using a graphical view of your storage
utilization, create, delete and schedule points-in-time. This form is explained
in details in the Configuration page.
