Shenan Stanley said:
What 'full system restoration program' do you have installed/configured
that you are referring to?
"System Restore" only manages 'system' files - it is not a backup
solution, nor would I suggest it be your only solution...
Thanks to both of you, Shenan and Malke.
Sorry I blended full system restoration with System Restore. It was bound
to be confusing.
Malke, you wrote on 8/21/07 to RBB "Roxio is not an image creator like
Acronis or Norton Ghost."
Taking that idea, I've downloaded Acronis and made a few full system
restoration files (one for each partition rather than one large file
containing all partitions on a drive).. I plan on monthly such full backups
with weekly differentials. If I am needing to back up to a point since the
last differential, I hope that System Restore will suffice. A downside of
System Restore is that all the files I have placed in a folder I created in
the root directory of C drive, vanish from being listed only for those
created after the restore date chosen. I understand that if I want to
protect files from Systen Restore, I would need to place them under My
Documents folder. This is the reason for my quesiton. It was a default
setting of System Restore to monitor all drives including the external one.
I can change it to monitor C drive only. I didn't notice about Systen
Restore monitoring everything until after the backups were done. In a test
of Acronis to recover the OS system, the question came to mind if I should
turn off the power of the external drive so that files don't vanish as they
do in the C drive. The external drive wouldn't be protected from changes as
it isn't under My Documents folder. Like you suggest, from now on, I'll
only have the C drive monitored. With this vanishing files thing happening,
I was wondering if using System Restore and/or Acronis would also have
missing file listings happen on the external drive. I had to test Acronis
in Safe version using the backup file on a separate partition of my local
drive because Acronis did not recognize my external drive using the Full
version as it was suppose to. I've written to Acronis about this yesterday
and no answer just yet. It is my wish to use the external drive for storage
of backup files.
But, can you imagine this: There's a program needed to read certain
filetypes. You can't find it anywhere to install again. Knowing that you
have a full system restore file newly created, you go to a full system
restore point from last months backup file. After using the program and
decide again not to keep it anymore, you want to restore back to today's
newly created one. But will it be listed on the external drive as a choice
since the computer's restore points, registery, or whatever doesn't show
files that was created of a later date?
This is more of a discussion than a current problem. I'd like to know what
to expect before proceeding with just about everything. "An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Rgds,
Kevin