Creation of System Restore points

[jmt356]

My computer has three automatically-created restore points: 25 Nov. 2014, 18 Nov. 2014 and 7 Nov. 2014. If these are the only three that display, does it mean that the furthest back I can go is & Nov. 2014? Also, what determines the frequency of these automatic restore points and why are they irregular (e.g., first at an 11-day interval and then at a 7-day interval)?

[HansV]

The number of restore points depends on the size that has been set aside for them.
Open the System control panel, then click System Protection.
Select the system drive (usually C:), then click Configure...
As you can see in the screenshot below, a maximum of 5% of the disk space has been allotted for system restore on my PC. That is enough for 3 restore points.

S0209.png

To change the disk space allotted for system restore, drag the slider.

Windows 8 creates an automatic restore point:
- When you install software.
- Before a critical Windows update.
- If no other restore point has been created during 7 days. I.e., it should create at least a restore point at least once a week.

Since there is a gap of 11 days between two of your restore points: was your computer turned off during that period?

[PaulB]

Food for thought:

I do full backups of all HDDs once a week using ShadowProtect.
I do incremental backups hourly from 09:00 to 23:00 daily.
That gives me 106 "restore points" per HDD per week.
I maintain 6 generations of backups (max. 636 "restore points" per HDD).
I can't remember the last time I did a System Restore.

Question: Is there any reason at all for me to have System Protection turned on for any HDD?

[HansV]

No, I don't think so.

[Rudi]

Based on those stats, I pretty much think you are covered

[PaulB]

Thanks.

[BobH]

Jumping in here . . .

. . . this is the screen I see in Win 7 HPE.

11a.gif

When I first came to this panel, the radio button for "Turn off system protection" was selected. Turning off system protection seemed the wrong thing to do; so I clicked the button as shown and got the warning.

Can someone please explain what's going on here for me? What SHOULD I be doing here?

[HansV]

The maximum disk space used for system protection applies to restore points and shadow copies (previous versions of files) combined. So if you turn on system protection (restore points), there will be less space for shadow copies. If you have enough free disk space, you can drag the Max Usage slider to the right.

But since your current usage is 4 GB and the max is over 42 GB, there is no need to increase the max usage now.

[BobH]

The maximum disk space used for system protection applies to restore points and shadow copies (previous versions of files) combined. So if you turn on system protection (restore points), there will be less space for shadow copies. If you have enough free disk space, you can drag the Max Usage slider to the right.

But since your current usage is 4 GB and the max is over 42 GB, there is no need to increase the max usage now.

Thanks, Hans!

That part I can understand, but I don't know why the default no system protection; and I don't understand the warning message.

[HansV]

I think system protection is turned on by default for the system disk (the one that contains Windows) only, and turned off for all others. In general, there is no need to turn on system protection for non-system disks.

[BobH]

Ach !

I thought I was looking at C:

Getting old is H#ll!

[jmt356]

Food for thought:

I do full backups of all HDDs once a week using ShadowProtect.
I do incremental backups hourly from 09:00 to 23:00 daily.
That gives me 106 "restore points" per HDD per week.
I maintain 6 generations of backups (max. 636 "restore points" per HDD).
I can't remember the last time I did a System Restore.

Question: Is there any reason at all for me to have System Protection turned on for any HDD?

I am not that familiar with ShadowProject, but if it behaves like Acronis TrueImage, I would suggest turning on System Protection. The reason is because with TrueImage, if you need to restore your computer to a previous image, you will lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored. Using System Protection, when you revert to a restore point, Windows only changes the programs and configuration of your computer to match the state of the computer at the time of your restore point, without impacting your files.

[StuartR]

...
I would suggest turning on System Protection. The reason is because with TrueImage, if you need to restore your computer to a previous image, you will lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored. Using System Protection, when you revert to a restore point, Windows only changes the programs and configuration of your computer to match the state of the computer at the time of your restore point, without impacting your files.

I never store any documents on the system partition for exactly this reason.

[PaulB]

I am not that familiar with ShadowProject, but if it behaves like Acronis TrueImage, I would suggest turning on System Protection. The reason is because with TrueImage, if you need to restore your computer to a previous image, you will lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored. Using System Protection, when you revert to a restore point, Windows only changes the programs and configuration of your computer to match the state of the computer at the time of your restore point, without impacting your files.

I have never used Acronis TrueImage but have no reason to believe that it is any less capable than ShadowProtect. They both do essentially the same thing.

That being said, I take issue with your statement that I would "lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored." Granted, if I restored only the last full image, I could be set back by up to a full week. That is why I take incremental backups, in my case hourly. The most data I could possibly lose is changes made within up to the last 60 minutes.

You may want to read up on the concept of full, incremental and differential backups and see what a real measure of security they provide compared to the rather wishy-washy explanation of what is, and is not, actually backed up and restored by System Protection.

The value of apps like ShadowProtect and TrueImage was driven home for me when I lost my data disk a few weeks ago. Once I had exchanged the defunct disk for a new one, I was able to restore all 165 GB of data within 30-35 minutes. Had I instead lost my system disk, I could have recovered that in even less time with no loss of data, including the incredible amount of user data stored in the user profile(s) on the system disk.

[jmt356]

I am not that familiar with ShadowProject, but if it behaves like Acronis TrueImage, I would suggest turning on System Protection. The reason is because with TrueImage, if you need to restore your computer to a previous image, you will lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored. Using System Protection, when you revert to a restore point, Windows only changes the programs and configuration of your computer to match the state of the computer at the time of your restore point, without impacting your files.

I have never used Acronis TrueImage but have no reason to believe that it is any less capable than ShadowProtect. They both do essentially the same thing.

That being said, I take issue with your statement that I would "lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored." Granted, if I restored only the last full image, I could be set back by up to a full week. That is why I take incremental backups, in my case hourly. The most data I could possibly lose is changes made within up to the last 60 minutes.

You may want to read up on the concept of full, incremental and differential backups and see what a real measure of security they provide compared to the rather wishy-washy explanation of what is, and is not, actually backed up and restored by System Protection.

The value of apps like ShadowProtect and TrueImage was driven home for me when I lost my data disk a few weeks ago. Once I had exchanged the defunct disk for a new one, I was able to restore all 165 GB of data within 30-35 minutes. Had I instead lost my system disk, I could have recovered that in even less time with no loss of data, including the incredible amount of user data stored in the user profile(s) on the system disk.

On TrueImage, it does not matter whether you are restoring a full backup, incremental or differential image. In any of these cases, when restoring an image, you will lose all of the data entered into since the date of the backup that is being restored (whether it is full, incremental or differential).

If you saved this data 60 minutes ago, you could then go back and restore it all with True Image after you have deleted it by restoring a previous image, but it is time-consuming. For me, I would have to restore all of my documents to Documents, all of my music to Music, all of my downloads to Downloads, etc., and then go back and delete all of the duplicates, since Acronis simply copies in newer versions of files without deleting the old ones, thus creating duplicates. This could be avoiding by first deleting all of the data and then restoring it all from the more recent backup, but again, that takes a lot more work than doing a simple Windows restore.

...
I would suggest turning on System Protection. The reason is because with TrueImage, if you need to restore your computer to a previous image, you will lose any changes made to your documents, photos and other files since the date of the image that is restored. Using System Protection, when you revert to a restore point, Windows only changes the programs and configuration of your computer to match the state of the computer at the time of your restore point, without impacting your files.

I never store any documents on the system partition for exactly this reason.

Stuart: Suppose you install a program and it negatively impacts your computer. You now want to roll back to the state that your computer was in before you installed the program. Do you only restore the system partition only? If so, will that cause the computer's configuration match its statute prior to the installation of the program without impacting any of the data (documents, music, pictures, etc.)?

[StuartR]

...

...
I never store any documents on the system partition for exactly this reason.

Stuart: Suppose you install a program and it negatively impacts your computer. You now want to roll back to the state that your computer was in before you installed the program. Do you only restore the system partition only? If so, will that cause the computer's configuration match its statute prior to the installation of the program without impacting any of the data (documents, music, pictures, etc.)?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

It does take some discipline to NEVER store any data on the partition where I have the operating system and applications, but I can restore the previous system backup at any time with no lost data.

[jmt356]

Windows Explorer indicates that I have 2 hard disk drives:
- Local Disk (C:)
- RECOVERY (D:)

Is what you call the "system partition" the same as my D: drive? If so, does this mean that I can roll back my computer's status to a previous backup image by simply restoring the D: drive without touching the C: drive and thus preserve all my data (I store all my documents, music, photos, downloads, etc. to my C: drive).

[HansV]

Most probably, your C: drive is both the system drive and the data drive, i.e. it contains Windows and also all your documents. I think your D: drive is only intended to reinstall Windows. So your setup is different from Stuart's setup.

[PaulB]

The purpose of the recovery drive in systems I have owned in the past is to restore a computer to an out-of-box state. In other words, the computer is restored to the way it was when shipped from the manufacturer. All user data is lost. Your system may of course be different, but I would not rely on the recovery partition except in the most catastrophic of situations.