Bill said:
If you have only put your user data (like documents) on D:, you should be
ok, since those types of files aren't monitored by System Restore (that's
not its function or purpose).
I'm assuming here that your System Restore is correctly set up to be
monitoring the C: drive (that's found under System Restore's System Restore
Settings).
There would be a problem IF any windows system or program files were being
stored to D: (by your changes), and IF you hadn't allowed System Restore to
monitor that drive too. But I'm assuming you haven't done that.
So wording the answer a different way:
1) By default, without any user intervention, all partitions
are monitored. This is a mistake. (And to compound the mistake even
further, every time you plug in a hard drive, SR adds all the partitions
to the list to be monitored. And, adds System Volume Information folders
to those partitions. I haven't found a way to stop that.)
2) Experienced users enter the control panel, and select only C:
for monitoring. As the desire is to repair damage to a system
folder or to Program Files or whatever. Not to screw up every data partition
in sight.
3) An experienced user will also adjust the max amount of space allocated
for System Restore. The default can be too big, storing 3 months of stuff.
System Restore, if you're going to use it, only makes sense over short
time spans. (Install a program you didn't want in the morning, restore
the system in the afternoon.) The longer you wait to use a particular
restore point (like a three month old one), the less likely it is to
work properly. Maybe 3GB is enough space, rather than whatever the
default size allocation is.
4) System Restore is considered to be tainted, any time there is a malware
attack on the machine. So half the time, using SR isn't recommended because
of the nature of the emergency (malware attack). One of the first places
the malware heads, is to load up the SR points with more malware, so a
user restoring from SR, will re-infect themselves. A person helping
you remove malware, will also help you "wipe" the restore points.
The system restore list is in:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Restore\filelist.xml
based on its similarity to the content of this article.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/filesfolders.html
<DIRECTORIES>
<Exclude>
<REC>%personaldocuments%</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\All Users\Favorites</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\All Users\Documents</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\My Documents</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\NetHood</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Favorites</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Cookies</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Cache</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Local Settings\History</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temp</REC>
<REC>%SystemDrive%\Documents And Settings\Default User\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files</REC>
</Exclude>
Apparently, the %personaldocuments% one to exclude, is
dereferenced from this registry key, under "personal". The
value of my key in that case, is %USERPROFILE%\My Documents.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
So after all that mumbo-jumbo, the "My Documents" folder of your user account,
is not tracked by System Restore. Which is good if you store browser downloads
in the My Documents tree. If you store your downloads elsewhere on C:, in a place
not in the Exclude list, the state is tracked by SR, and you can lose download
files if you restore to a point in the past (because those files didn't
exist back then, so SR erases them). If you notice data loss like that
(as I did once), you can use SR again and move forward in time, then
move the "potential victim" files to a safe place, then use SR to go
backwards again.
If you're going to store personal data on D:, this is fine, as long as monitoring
on D: is turned off.
I keep System Restore turned off entirely on my system, so I won't have to
worry when plugging in a Windows 7 or Windows 8 disk. I still don't know
whether Microsoft designed System Volume Information folder, so that all
OSes can coexist without corruption...
I rely on my full backups, for protection. If you need a tool to do that,
Macrium Reflect Free version is available, and can be used to image
individual partitions. My own method, is too obscure to repeat here
(meaning, if I told you how I did it, you'd just laugh).
Paul
