The Benefits of Disabling System Restore
Windows XP comes with a number of cool features -- some of which many of us haven't had time to explore enough to fully understand. One such feature is System Restore. Here's some info about the System Restore feature and a suggestion as to when you might want to switch it off.
System Restore periodically takes a snapshot of your computer. You can use the snapshots to restore your computer to a previous state. Windows automatically and regularly makes snapshots to help save your neck when your computer unexpectedly dies. Some programs will actually create a snapshot before they install themselves -- just in case.
If, for example, you are using SVS to test applications, or your solution to fixing computer problems is to re-image the machine -- you can turn off System Restore. Why? There are several reasons why disabling this feature might be useful:
- System Restore was created as a fail-safe. If you are using SVS or can re-image the machine you have a fail-safe. How many fail-safes do you need?
- The System Restore feature takes up space. The default setting for System Restore uses 12% of your hard drive. That adds up to a lot of extra space that can be used for something else.
- If you are creating images, the system restore files make their way into the image, making it 12% bigger than it should be. Why use this feature if you can just re-image the machine?
This is how you disable System Restore:
- Right Click on "My Computer"
- Go to "Properties"
- The "System Properties" window will open, click on the "System Restore" tab
- Check the box next to "Turn off System Restore on all drives"
Now, magically, you have more space on your drive!
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Comments
On the other hand...
You can also opt to disable system restore on all other drives and leave the systemdrive enabled.
A lot of the time certain installations are triggering the system restore feature, e.g. driver install.
And then it would be smart to have that enabled, some new drivers can render your system inoperable, and a system restore point would save a lot of time.
Doing a restore from an image leaves (even when one claims not) a lot of configuring after the image restore.
kind Regards, Starf0x
______________________________________________
Frank Bastiaens
Senior Technical Consultant
Vanderlet B.V.
To build a restore point or not?
I never build a restore point.
Once a week my portable is imaged by Altiris Deployment Solution.
This is a viable backup solution for me.
My data is backed up using an off line storage by Microsoft DFS.
Regards
Erik
www.svs4u.nl
Regards Erik www.DinamiQs.com Dinamiqs is the home of VirtualStorm (www.virtualstorm.org)
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I would agree..
I would agree if I was an corporte user, but the tip is mostly meant for people who have administrative access to their OS.
Which in most corporate environments is not the case. (it would be smart).
Kind Regards, Starf0x
______________________________________________
Frank Bastiaens
Senior Technical Consultant
Vanderlet B.V.
I agree
I agree with you Starf0x.
I am a corporate user, and have the ability to use the Deployment Solution to create my restore points.
The same can also be done with a program like Ghost, and create a viable backup on your D drive or a external USB drive.
regards
Erik
www.svs4u.nl
Regards Erik www.DinamiQs.com Dinamiqs is the home of VirtualStorm (www.virtualstorm.org)
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Imaging
An image of the OS, is only valid for the first week, after that most of the settings / applications or drivers can be changed, also the windows update patches are even newer then when the image was created.
In Vista there is now a viable option called "Backup and Restore Center".
It creates an full backup the first time, and afterwards incrementals.
I've set that up to create an incremental every week, so when I need to restore the system, I'm able to go back up to the full image or maybe the last good working situation.
At the moment I have 1 full backup and 8 weekly backups, that is in total 6.6 GB.
Looking at the space used I opt as a home user for this solution.
Kind Regards, FrankB
______________________________________________
Frank Bastiaens
Senior Technical Consultant
Vanderlet B.V.
Minimum rules for backups
It depends where you store this backup data and if you have a bootable device.
These rules also apply to home users:
If the Vista option does have these features your fine. If not, re-think your security level: maybe it is good enough, but maybe you'll need a different option.
Just my 2 cents
Ciao
toralf
Vista option
The Vista backup and restore option is a very good way to backup you're machine.
Still there is a problem trying to restore when your current OS is going down and crashes.
The backup restore is then difficult, and gives sometimes errors correcting the drivers.
regards
Erik
Regards Erik www.DinamiQs.com Dinamiqs is the home of VirtualStorm (www.virtualstorm.org)
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Our rules are really simple
Our rules are really simple, only "private" data is stored locally, so when we create a computer image we have the complete corporate configuration included the folders redirection on the shared network folders that contains the user and workgroup data.
If for some reasons the disk is lost we can restore all the correct corporate but of course is a user duty cover to backup the "private" folders (if exists).
Regards
PM
I agree with Starf0x
I agree with Starf0x solution, leave only the system drive enabled is a good way to safe vital information on the computer.
Regards
PM
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