Introducing VSS Support › How VSS Support Works › Service Roles › Writers and Components

Writers and Components

The keys to shadow copy technology are the Writers and their Components.

Writer

Part of an application or service that works with VSS to prepare the application’s data into a consistent state at the time of the shadow copy backup request.

Component

A group of files or folders, selected for backup, that are controlled by the application or service under the Writer's control.

While an application or service is frozen, the Writer suspends writes on the original volume, so that the files selected for backup (the Components) remain in a consistent state during the creation of the shadow copy. Although writes are suspended during this time, the process is transparent to the user working on the selected files.