Excluding file types/folders from System Restore

[Ben]

Hi there,

I am a software developer running windows xp service pack 2 and
noticed I was down on free space so I thought I'd run WinDirStat to
see what's taking up space on my machine and was shocked to see that
the "C:\System Volume Information\" folder was filled with over 14GB
of Interbase database files!

I have heard that "System Restore" makes a backup copy of certain file
types before they're opened and files with a .GDB extension falls into
this category - unfortunately '.GDB' is the file extension Interbase
5.6 uses for database files and we have a lot of them.

It's not feasible for us to rename our database files so I was
wondering if there is a way to tell the system restore to not backup
gdb files or even better not backup files in a certain directory?

Thanks,
Ben

 

[Nightowl]

I am a software developer running windows xp service pack 2 and
noticed I was down on free space so I thought I'd run WinDirStat to
see what's taking up space on my machine and was shocked to see that
the "C:\System Volume Information\" folder was filled with over 14GB
of Interbase database files!

I have heard that "System Restore" makes a backup copy of certain file
types before they're opened and files with a .GDB extension falls into
this category - unfortunately '.GDB' is the file extension Interbase
5.6 uses for database files and we have a lot of them.

It's not feasible for us to rename our database files so I was
wondering if there is a way to tell the system restore to not backup
gdb files or even better not backup files in a certain directory?

Hi Ben

I had a similar problem with Zone Alarm's .RDB database files being
backed up every few minutes and bloating the System Restore points. I
found this fix on the ZA forum and it worked beautifully for me.

Open Regedit and navigate to the key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup]

Create a new multi-string value (REG_MULTI_SZ) and call it what you
wish, ExcludeMyGDB for example . For the data use drive\path to
folder\*.GDB

If this doesn't work for you it's also possible to achieve the same
thing by editing filelist.xml in the %windir%\system32\Restore folder.
If you do this you may find you need to stop and restart System Restore,
losing all your current restore points, to make it take notice of the
change.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on

 

[Ron Martell]

Hi there,

I am a software developer running windows xp service pack 2 and
noticed I was down on free space so I thought I'd run WinDirStat to
see what's taking up space on my machine and was shocked to see that
the "C:\System Volume Information\" folder was filled with over 14GB
of Interbase database files!

I have heard that "System Restore" makes a backup copy of certain file
types before they're opened and files with a .GDB extension falls into
this category - unfortunately '.GDB' is the file extension Interbase
5.6 uses for database files and we have a lot of them.

It's not feasible for us to rename our database files so I was
wondering if there is a way to tell the system restore to not backup
gdb files or even better not backup files in a certain directory?

Thanks,
Ben

System Restore is intended to work only with the operating system
files, and I am surprised to hear that you have found they were
included.

One sure-fire work around would be to partition the hard drive and put
the data base files onto a different partition. System Restore can
then be disabled for that partition and in fact this is recommended
practice for partitions that contain only data files and/or
application programs.

The best available resource for information about System Restore is
MVP Bert Kinney's System Restore pages:
http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html

The information about your files is at
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/filesfolders.html

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Nightowl]

System Restore is intended to work only with the operating system
files, and I am surprised to hear that you have found they were
included.

Ron, the list on Bert's site is the contents of the file filelist.xml in
%SystemRoot%\System32\Restore. As you see, it does include .GDB which
Ben is using, and .RDB, which is used by Zone Alarm for its database
files. A bug in recent versions of ZA makes it back up its database
every few minutes, bloating the restore points with hundreds of copies
-- there are extensive threads on the ZA forum from people with the
problem. Another file type SR backs up is .USR, which my mail client
uses for profile information. Perhaps when System Restore was designed
these file types were not in extensive use by third-party programs?

 

[Ron Martell]

Ron, the list on Bert's site is the contents of the file filelist.xml in
%SystemRoot%\System32\Restore. As you see, it does include .GDB which
Ben is using, and .RDB, which is used by Zone Alarm for its database
files. A bug in recent versions of ZA makes it back up its database
every few minutes, bloating the restore points with hundreds of copies
-- there are extensive threads on the ZA forum from people with the
problem. Another file type SR backs up is .USR, which my mail client
uses for profile information. Perhaps when System Restore was designed
these file types were not in extensive use by third-party programs?

It appears that there are at least 9 different applications that use
the GDB file extension, including one component of Office 2007.

This proliferation of different uses for file extensions does create
problems, and not just with system restore.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Ben Daniel]

Woot, thanks Nightowl. I've added that string to the registry, stopped
& restarted the system restore folder and noticed the gdbs where still
there under that volume information folder so I turned off System
Restore under My Computer --> Properties and turned it back on again.
That cleaned it up. And I'll just check out that folder every now to
make sure no gdbs are going in there.

Cheers

 

[Nightowl]

Woot, thanks Nightowl. I've added that string to the registry, stopped
& restarted the system restore folder and noticed the gdbs where still
there under that volume information folder so I turned off System
Restore under My Computer --> Properties and turned it back on again.
That cleaned it up. And I'll just check out that folder every now to
make sure no gdbs are going in there.

You're welcome, Ben. I should have mentioned that I too had to turn off
System Restore, reboot and then re-enable it to get the change noticed,
but the person on the ZA forum who posted the fix said he didn't need to
do this, so I thought perhaps it was just my machine

Glad it's now working for you. When checking the restore point, you
might see the odd .GDB in there from other sources, since that file type
is backed up by default, but SR should not now be caching anything from
your excluded folder.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Another alternative is to store the .gdb files in the My Documents folder.
System Restore does not monitor in the My Documents folder in Windows XP.


Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org