Protect and restore content by using Recycle Bins and versioning (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)

Applies To: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Topic Last Modified: 2008-07-18

Unlike previous versions of SharePoint Products and Technologies, you do not need to perform a content database recovery to retrieve deleted objects. Instead, you can use the Recycle Bin and the second-stage Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin provides a feature that enables users to restore items that are in the Recycle Bin — including deleted files, documents, list items, lists, and document libraries.

You can also use versioning to help prevent data loss that is caused by overwriting a document. When a site owner turns on versioning in a document library or a list, the library or list keeps multiple copies of a document, item, or file. In the event of an unwanted change, an overwritten file, or document corruption, the previous version can be easily restored by the end user.

Protecting content by using the Recycle Bin

The second-stage Recycle Bin (also called the site-collection Recycle Bin) is available to site collection administrators. The second-stage Recycle Bin is organized into two views: objects in the Recycle Bins of all sites in the site collection, and objects in the second-stage Recycle Bin. When an item is deleted from the Recycle Bin, it can only be recovered by a site collection administrator from the second-stage Recycle Bin.

When you enable the second-stage Recycle Bin for a Web application, you must designate how much disk space is available to the second-stage Recycle Bin as a percentage of the quota allotted to the Web application. For example, if you have allotted 100 megabytes (MB) of space for the Web application, allotting a 50% quota for the second-stage Recycle Bin allots 50 MB for the second-stage Recycle Bin and 150 MB for the Web application as a whole. You can allot up to 100% for the second-stage Recycle Bin quota. For more information about planning and creating quota templates, see the following articles:

• Plan for site maintenance and management (Windows SharePoint Services)

• Create quota templates (Windows SharePoint Services)

The following table describes how an item is deleted and recovered from the Recycle Bin and the second-stage Recycle Bin.

For more information about using the Recycle Bin in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, see View, restore, or delete items in the Recycle Bin (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90917&clcid=0x409)

To configure Recycle Bins, see Configure and manage the Recycle Bin (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0).

Protecting content by using versioning

When properly understood and implemented, versioning provides a user-driven content recovery method and also informs users about the stage of development of a document — for example:

• Is this document a draft or a published version?

• Which changes have been made recently?

• Has the metadata changed, and why?

Before attempting to use versioning to protect and restore your SharePoint content, be sure to read Plan for site maintenance and management (Windows SharePoint Services).

You can configure versioning by using the following procedure:

Enable and configure versioning (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)

Administrators need to manage versioning because if sites have many versions of files and documents, the sites can become quite large. If you do not restrict the size of sites, your sites can surpass your storage capacity. Farm administrators can manage this issue by establishing service level agreements with site owners and by setting size quotas on sites. To manage versioning, use the following procedure:

Manage versioning by using quotas (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)

See Also

Concepts

Protecting and restoring the farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Back up and restore the farm (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)
Use alternative methods to back up and restore content (Windows SharePoint Server 3.0)
Troubleshooting backup and recovery (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0)