Vista Restore Points

  • Thread starter Thread starter amlandreau
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A

amlandreau

Hi everybody,

Does somebody know where on earth (and on the HD ! ) Vista Ultimate saves
all the Restore Points ?
I would like to prevent some of them to be erased in the future. Thanks for
helpe

Andre Landreau
 
amlandreau said:
Hi everybody,

Does somebody know where on earth (and on the HD ! ) Vista Ultimate saves
all the Restore Points ?
I would like to prevent some of them to be erased in the future. Thanks
for helpe
Click to expand...

You can't do what you want and selectively save restore points. Newer
restore points are made and older restore points are deleted. Instead,
consider purchasing an external hard drive and imaging software such as
Acronis True Image. Create an image of your perfectly-working system and
store it on the external drive. You'll be able to restore the system with
it in a matter of minutes. You can also use the external drive for general
data backups.


Malke
 
Hi Malke,
In fact for total backup and restore i simply use the Backup/Restore
available on Vista Ultimate and a DVD disk.
But for other reasons i am still looking on where the operating system
stores the system restore points.
Cheers,
 
No can do.

You can increase the space allocated to SR so you have more restore points
available. Once the maximum space allocated is reached the older ones will
be deleted as new ones are created.
 
amlandreau said:
Hi everybody,

Does somebody know where on earth (and on the HD ! ) Vista Ultimate saves
all the Restore Points ?
I would like to prevent some of them to be erased in the future. Thanks
for helpe

Andre Landreau
Click to expand...


As I understand, the information/data which allows restore points to do then
stuff when called upon is in a variety of different locations. There is no
'one' place..

--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx
 
amlandreau said:
But for other reasons i am still looking on where the operating
system stores the system restore points.
Click to expand...

They are stored in the hidden system folder C:\System Volume Information.

Charlie42
 
amlandreau said:
Hi Malke,
In fact for total backup and restore i simply use the Backup/Restore
available on Vista Ultimate and a DVD disk.
But for other reasons i am still looking on where the operating system
stores the system restore points.
Cheers,
Click to expand...

OK, I did a quick Google for "where are System Restore files Vista" and
immediately found this entry in this newsgroup:
microsoft.public.windows.vista.file_management

by Jill Zoeller of Microsoft:

"They are stored as shadow copies and can't be browsed. See
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/arc...ows-vista.aspx
for more details."

Here's the link Jill gave in case the quoted one above doesn't work:

http://tinyurl.com/2hz8vb

Hopefully that will help you find what you're looking for.


Malke
 
With Vista Ultimate you can selectively delete shadow copies of files, but
actual restore point manipulation is not allowed.



Can I permanently save a restore point for later use?

By design and under normal conditions System Restore will automatically
create a new restore point every 24 hours.

When the allotted disk space is reached, the oldest restore point will be
purged on a first in first out (FIFO) basis. Otherwise, restore points over
90 days are purged automatically by default.

Each one of these restore points are chained (or linked) together with
previous restore points. When a restore point is chosen, all restore point
created prior to that restore point are also required to complete the
restoration.

While all of this is going on, in real time, a log is being created or
updated that tracks the consistency between the files System Restore is
monitoring, and the files that are actually backed up. If an inconsistency
is found between the log file and the files located in the System Volume
Information folder, restore point corruption can occur. In turn this causes
the chain to become broken and any prior restore points to become useless,
thus causing System Restore to fail at a restore. At this point all restore
points would have to be purged to remove the corruption. So you can see,
backing up and restoring restore points would cause an inconsistency in the
restore log thus causing corruption and the loss of all restore points.

Note: Any changes made within the System Volume Information folder (where
System Restore stores restore information) will almost certainly cause the
same corruption.



Can I delete individual restore points from the system volume information
folder?

No, and here is why: Each restore point is chained (or linked) together with
previous restore points. When you choose to restore a system all the
previous restore points are required to complete the restore, thus if one is
missing the chain will be broken and cause all existing restore points to
become corrupt. At this point all restore points will need to purged to
correct the corruption. So the best advise is to NOT touch the contents of
the System Volume Information folder.
 
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