What Else Is New?
Although we've spent a good deal of time discussing major new technologies and features in Vista, modern operating systems also include a number of smaller technologies and applications which have also been introduced or given a facelift in Vista. We won't cover everything, but here are some highlights of the new additions to Vista.
System Restore/Volume Shadow Copy/Previous Versions
When Microsoft released Windows Millennium Edition back in 1999, one of the few novel features in the operating system was a feature called System Restore, which kept regular on-drive backups of system files so that if a new driver, configuration error, or similar event interrupted Windows' ability to function correctly, a user could roll the system back to an earlier and hopefully functional state. This tool was further refined in XP but it remained fundamentally the same; it was a solution to protect the system and not the user.
For Vista, Microsoft has finally extended that protection to the user by integrating one of their technologies developed for Windows Server 2003: Volume Shadow Copy. Volume Shadow Copy can keep multiple copies of a file/directory stored so that if for any reason an older copy of a document needs to be restored, this can be done quickly within Windows by picking among the shadow copies created whenever Server takes a snapshot of the file system. With Vista, Volume Shadow Copy has been integrated into System Restore so that System Restore now uses Volume Shadow Copy for keeping snapshots. This allows System Restore to completely backup all files now and not just system files, and it allows Windows to restore single files instead of entire snapshots.
While all versions of Vista technically have this feature, only Business/Enterprise and Ultimate have it enabled, as Microsoft is initially pitching this as a business feature. Lower versions of Windows still have System Restore, but it does not keep track of all user files like it does in the higher versions. To keep these two features separate, Microsoft refers to the ability to restore user files via Volume Shadow Copy as Previous Versions, but since the snapshot process is controlled via System Restore, this makes for a poor distinction that will end up confusing at least a few people.
For all users of Vista, Microsoft has now fixed the maximum System Restore cache size at 15% of a drive's capacity, whereas it was previously a variable setting. The amount of disk space used is dynamically allocated, so it is not quite an all-or-nothing proposition, but it's possible to eventually fill the 15% allocation depending on the habits of the user. To this extent Vista goes through a fair amount of effort both to only capture changed data (at the volume-block level since VSS works on whole volumes) and later throw out unnecessary files, so for most systems a 15% cap offers a long enough file history for the feature to be useful. However, on large hard drives the amount of reserve space may grow to be more than is truly necessary -- and on smaller hard drives it might not be large enough to store an acceptable number of copies. The old method were System Restore could be designated a variable amount of drive space via the GUI seems to make more sense.
Given that Apple will be releasing a similar technology in the next release of MacOS X, we wouldn't rule out Microsoft enabling Previous Versions functionality on some consumer versions of Vista in the future - the technology is there so enabling it would allow them to keep feature parity with MacOS X even though the latter is being released later. In the mean time however, this is one of the features that makes the Business or Ultimate editions a more compelling purchase than the Home versions.
Update: After talking to Microsoft's System Restore group, they have given us two additional pieces of information: 1) The Volume Shadow Copy service functions the same way on all versions of Vista as long as System Restore is enabled, including backing up user files. This means it's possible to get a variant of the Previous Versions functionality even on lower versions of Windows if someone were to write an interface for it. 2) The ability to modify the size of the System Restore/Shadow Copy cache is still available via the console with the vssadmin resize shadowstorage command.
Although we've spent a good deal of time discussing major new technologies and features in Vista, modern operating systems also include a number of smaller technologies and applications which have also been introduced or given a facelift in Vista. We won't cover everything, but here are some highlights of the new additions to Vista.
System Restore/Volume Shadow Copy/Previous Versions
When Microsoft released Windows Millennium Edition back in 1999, one of the few novel features in the operating system was a feature called System Restore, which kept regular on-drive backups of system files so that if a new driver, configuration error, or similar event interrupted Windows' ability to function correctly, a user could roll the system back to an earlier and hopefully functional state. This tool was further refined in XP but it remained fundamentally the same; it was a solution to protect the system and not the user.
For Vista, Microsoft has finally extended that protection to the user by integrating one of their technologies developed for Windows Server 2003: Volume Shadow Copy. Volume Shadow Copy can keep multiple copies of a file/directory stored so that if for any reason an older copy of a document needs to be restored, this can be done quickly within Windows by picking among the shadow copies created whenever Server takes a snapshot of the file system. With Vista, Volume Shadow Copy has been integrated into System Restore so that System Restore now uses Volume Shadow Copy for keeping snapshots. This allows System Restore to completely backup all files now and not just system files, and it allows Windows to restore single files instead of entire snapshots.
While all versions of Vista technically have this feature, only Business/Enterprise and Ultimate have it enabled, as Microsoft is initially pitching this as a business feature. Lower versions of Windows still have System Restore, but it does not keep track of all user files like it does in the higher versions. To keep these two features separate, Microsoft refers to the ability to restore user files via Volume Shadow Copy as Previous Versions, but since the snapshot process is controlled via System Restore, this makes for a poor distinction that will end up confusing at least a few people.
For all users of Vista, Microsoft has now fixed the maximum System Restore cache size at 15% of a drive's capacity, whereas it was previously a variable setting. The amount of disk space used is dynamically allocated, so it is not quite an all-or-nothing proposition, but it's possible to eventually fill the 15% allocation depending on the habits of the user. To this extent Vista goes through a fair amount of effort both to only capture changed data (at the volume-block level since VSS works on whole volumes) and later throw out unnecessary files, so for most systems a 15% cap offers a long enough file history for the feature to be useful. However, on large hard drives the amount of reserve space may grow to be more than is truly necessary -- and on smaller hard drives it might not be large enough to store an acceptable number of copies. The old method were System Restore could be designated a variable amount of drive space via the GUI seems to make more sense.
Given that Apple will be releasing a similar technology in the next release of MacOS X, we wouldn't rule out Microsoft enabling Previous Versions functionality on some consumer versions of Vista in the future - the technology is there so enabling it would allow them to keep feature parity with MacOS X even though the latter is being released later. In the mean time however, this is one of the features that makes the Business or Ultimate editions a more compelling purchase than the Home versions.
Update: After talking to Microsoft's System Restore group, they have given us two additional pieces of information: 1) The Volume Shadow Copy service functions the same way on all versions of Vista as long as System Restore is enabled, including backing up user files. This means it's possible to get a variant of the Previous Versions functionality even on lower versions of Windows if someone were to write an interface for it. 2) The ability to modify the size of the System Restore/Shadow Copy cache is still available via the console with the vssadmin resize shadowstorage command.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
105 Comments
View All Comments
nishzone - Saturday, May 24, 2008 - link
Hi,I'm glad tnat your memory usage is similar to mine and therefore I might finally understand this. You have 2 gig of Ram...I understand that superfetch is the reason free ram is 0 (cache increases as free memory decreases). But why is the memory usage 45%? so around 1 gig?
I also have 50% usage on startup. Is vista using 1 gig memory? There is something I don't understand here because you recommended 1 gig for general users.
Regards,
Nishzone
Dataland - Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - link
I think Microsoft needs a performance reset. As I've said in some previous posts, I think software in general, and Microsoft software in particular, is getting slower at faster rate than hardware is getting faster. And this problem acutely affects Vista. I think Microsoft needs... (Pingback)Performance Reset
http://dataland.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/performan...">http://dataland.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/performan...
Kondado - Saturday, February 10, 2007 - link
I've done my own tests. I sent the same amount of data (51 files, 2,5 GB) once from XP to Samba, then from Vista to Samba (OpenBSD). Then I did the same from XP to XP, and from Vista to XP. XP was always a LOT faster.I would really know if it's the drivers or the stack...
jonp - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
It seems like the budget system area was a little overlooked in this review of Vista. So I have some questions:"Memory in Vista..." - It appears that acceptable multitasking performance is found somewhere in the 3GB to 4GB memory size area. Many budget systems have only two memory slots and many new ones support dual memory access. This will force budget systems to 4GB which is fairly pricey now and probably will be for some time.
"CPU Performance..." - Your love for anything Core2 Duo shines here. But what about the dual core Pentium Ds? Like the D915 2.8GHz processor. Yes it is Netburst, but also easier on the budget than a Core 2 Duo processor. We need something more specific here in terms of benchmarks/guidelines.
Video adapters - I didn't see anything that talked about integrated video adapters vs. VGA/PCIe video adapters. Are any of the integrated graphic engines, like Intel 950GMA provide acceptable performance for VISTA? How about older video cards? Minimum graphics memory? Graphics engine speed? Again we need more specific guidance here.
Hard drive - You addressed hard drive performance, in a way, in the "Vista Search for Fast Drives Only" section. But again no specific device selection guidelines like: RPM, cache size, average access, size, data transfer rate, ...
Virtualization - It appears that MS forbids the use of virtualization products with Vista Home Basic and Home Premium editions forcing budget users to more costly editions of Vista.
Upgrade or "clean" install? - Not strictly a budget system issue; the web if full of warnings about NOT trying to upgrade to Vista --- that it should only be a "clean" install situation. That upgrading is fraught with too many pitfalls that it isn't even worth trying. And not all editions of Vista are allowed to do in-place upgrades of the XP editions; oh, and you can't do an in-place upgrade of anything prior to XP. See http://tinyurl.com/36ljxv">http://tinyurl.com/36ljxv for some upgrade details.
JarredWalton - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
Basically, a lot of that falls into areas we are going to look at in future articles. Given that we don't really recommend most people upgrade to Vista yet, the lower-end your system is the less we would consider Vista. Pretty much all of the DX9 NVIDIA and AMD cards do fine with the Vista Aero Glass UI, but IGP solutions are slower. Individual tolerance for the UI will vary; I'm sure plenty will be okay with GMA950 and Glass, while others won't want anything less than a $100 discrete GPU. Oh, and GPU drivers for Vista are still flaky, IMO. :)
HDD, anything 7200 RPM should be fine. CPU, really with a decent GPU the requirements aren't all that much higher than XP. RAM is more important - don't even think about Vista with less than 1GB - but HDD and CPU most people with anything made in the past two years will be fine. Just my opinion there - individual usage and preferences will again play a role.
I wouldn't say 3-4GB of RAM is even remotely necessary for most people. A few will like it, but 2GB is still sufficient for about 99% of people.
Virtualization and Upgrades... I'll have to defer to others there. Again, I recommend discretion, so I would tend towards doing a full backup (Ghost or similar) of any system before doing a Vista upgrade. I believe Gary is about to revert his system for the time being, as Vista has just had a few too many glitches. The number of people that worry about virtualization - really intending to use it, not just for test purposes - is again very small. I think mostly we're seeing the vocal minority complaining. Still, I find it odd that MS even worries about whether or not people run the OS via virtualization - unless the glitches are aggravated by such an environment, which is entirely possible.
jonp - Tuesday, February 6, 2007 - link
Thanks Jarred...you insights are always very helpful and I am glad that these topics will get more focus in the future. Jonjonp - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
Both of the charts in the Compound TCP section for Windows Vista say "Compact" and not "Compound".duploxxx - Sunday, February 4, 2007 - link
Its probably me that's missing a page or so but could you guys explain what system you used for these tests?funk3y - Saturday, February 3, 2007 - link
HelloI also spent some time testing the network part of windows vista, and I discovered some quite interesting things:
Windows Vista is reducing the network I/O when an application using the audio interface is launched, I discovered this when copying large files over my network.
When I copy large file through the network the average speed is 40 mb/sec and the taskmanager whow 30-50% of network use, as soon as I start an application playing sound (WMP, Skype, Warcraft III, ....) the rate drop to 8 mb/sec and the network use in the taskmanager never go beyond 12.5%
I achieved those test on different hardware, with differents drivers and the results are always the same; it is just impossible to get further then 12.5% of network use while playing a sound.
My guesses are that microsoft voluntary did this, in order to avoid sound crackling. Because of the new driver scheme, bad written drivers having to do many I/O could lead to sound degradation (I had this issue while using my raptors RAID on a NF4 board; making a lot of I/O on the disk just killed the sound quality).
As you where streaming a film while benchmarking, you may have been in this situation. It could be nice if you could rerun some benchmark taking into account all what I have written.
As I am already posting, here are some other consideration about DOS and vista:
-It is just impossible to launch a DOS application in fullscreen mode! This functionnality lack can be really painfull in environnement where DOS application are still well used; I just don't understand microsoft's choice
-I don't think that vista x64 is still able to launch 16 bit apps anymore (keep this in mind before upgrading to x64!)
ministerchief - Saturday, February 3, 2007 - link
I have a "Corsair Flash Voyager 4Gb" usb stick and I can't use it to "BOOST" my system.So, how anandtech could use it ?
Can someone tell me how to use this flash drive with the "READY BOOST" feature.
THX