How to permanently turn system restore off on my external drive ?

[Guest]

Using XP Home SP2 with all critical updates.

I have an external USB drive (SATA 320GB drive in an USB enclosure). If I
power the drive on before I startup the computer, the drive's partitions
appear as "monitored" in system restore. I use that external drive on several
computers and don't want it to be monitored as it could create inconsistency
in the system restore points and corrupt them.

I already assigned permanent volume letters to the drive's parititions via
disk management. System restore would sometimes stay disabled for several
days on that drive, then for no apparent reason the drive's partitions would
be monitored again (maybe after I used the external drive on another
computer, or used another external drive on this computer).

Anyone knows of a permanent solution to that problem ?

 

[Guest]

Using XP Home SP2 with all critical updates.

I have an external USB drive (SATA 320GB drive in an USB enclosure). If I
power the drive on before I startup the computer, the drive's partitions
appear as "monitored" in system restore. I use that external drive on several
computers and don't want it to be monitored as it could create inconsistency
in the system restore points and corrupt them.

I already assigned permanent volume letters to the drive's parititions via
disk management. System restore would sometimes stay disabled for several
days on that drive, then for no apparent reason the drive's partitions would
be monitored again (maybe after I used the external drive on another
computer, or used another external drive on this computer).

Anyone knows of a permanent solution to that problem ?

LFR>>> Use gpedit, read this article: 283073

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

I have an external USB drive (SATA 320GB drive in an USB enclosure).
If I power the drive on before I startup the computer, the drive's
partitions appear as "monitored" in system restore. I use that external
drive on several computers and don't want it to be monitored as it
could create inconsistency in the system restore points and corrupt
them.

"Exclude specific folders from system restore backup"
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37472.aspx

Anyone knows of a permanent solution to that problem ?

In order to exclude the hard drive permanently, assign the value
"X:\* /s" (w/o quotes) to the new multi-string value and replace
"X:" with the hard drive letter. However, note that this setting
has to be applied per computer.

 

[Guest]

LFR>>> Use gpedit, read this article: 283073

Thx, but I can't use gpedit with XP Home.

 

[Guest]

"Exclude specific folders from system restore backup"
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37472.aspx

In order to exclude the hard drive permanently, assign the value
"X:\* /s" (w/o quotes) to the new multi-string value and replace
"X:" with the hard drive letter. However, note that this setting
has to be applied per computer.

Thx for that answer, I'll try it.

But as I see it, it should only prevent that the files on my external drive
get monitored. How do I prevent XP to write system restore informations from
my system drive to the system volume information folder on my external drive
? Will this solution work ?

I just started the external drive before I started the computer and System
Restore was deactivated on the external drive's volumes at Windows startup,
but , as I said, this already happened before and for no apparent reason,
System Restore sometimes gets enabled again on the external drive.

My problem is not with the files on that drive being monitored, it's with
system restore informations being written on it.

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

Thx for that answer, I'll try it.

But as I see it, it should only prevent that the files on my external
drive get monitored. How do I prevent XP to write system restore
informations from my system drive to the system volume information
folder on my external drive
? Will this solution work ?
Yes.

I just started the external drive before I started the computer and
System Restore was deactivated on the external drive's volumes at
Windows startup, but , as I said, this already happened before and for
no apparent reason, System Restore sometimes gets enabled again on the
external drive.

That's normal. See also
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/msg/397bb30bd42c7ef9

 

[Guest]

So there's no way to prevent the external drive from appearing as monitored
in System Restore properties ?

Once Windows will have used the allocated space for system restore on the
system c: drive (which I reduces to 1GB since my system partition is only
15GB), how can I be sure it won't start writing informations in the system
volume information folders on my external drive ? I'm really not sure this
solution handles this...

I understand it makes it so that the files on the drive aren't monitored,
but I've read the article on microsoft support and there are no indications
that this will prevent system restore to write restore points to that drive.

By the way, how do you see the content of the System Volume Information
folders ? I'd like to see how much space is currently taken by the restore
points on my c: system partition.

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

I'm really not sure this solution handles this...

Just try it out.

By the way, how do you see the content of the System Volume Information
folders ?

"How to gain access to the System Volume Information folder"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531/en-us

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Detlev,

The registry key mentioned in the Tweakxp article is incorrect. That key
controls files and folder backed up using NTBACKUP.EXE, not System Restore.
The list of files and folder monitored by System Restore are located in the
%windir%\system32\restore\Filelist.xml folder.


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

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi,

Other than assigning a permanent drive letter, and stopping monitoring of
the external, I would suggest only connecting and disconnecting the drive
while Windows is running.

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

 

[Bert Kinney]

Thx for that answer, I'll try it.

But as I see it, it should only prevent that the files on my external drive
get monitored. How do I prevent XP to write system restore informations from
my system drive to the system volume information folder on my external drive
? Will this solution work ?

I just started the external drive before I started the computer and System
Restore was deactivated on the external drive's volumes at Windows startup,
but , as I said, this already happened before and for no apparent reason,
System Restore sometimes gets enabled again on the external drive.

My problem is not with the files on that drive being monitored, it's with
system restore informations being written on it.

If System Restore is not monitoring the external, it should not be writing
files to it. Also take a look at the following information.

What is the System Volume Information folder used for and why is it there?
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#SVIWhatIsIt

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

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

Hi Detlev,

The registry key mentioned in the Tweakxp article is incorrect. That key
controls files and folder backed up using NTBACKUP.EXE, not System
Restore. The list of files and folder monitored by System Restore are
located in the %windir%\system32\restore\Filelist.xml folder.

Hi Bert, )

yes, modifying the "Filelist.xml" file is another option that I've tried
out. However, modifiying the registry is the better choice from my point
of view. Anyway, tweaking the registry the way as described works for
all of my systems having an external drive and there are no more system
restore points. Again, trying out is the best advice that I can give.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Bert, )

yes, modifying the "Filelist.xml" file is another option that I've tried
out. However, modifiying the registry is the better choice from my point
of view. Anyway, tweaking the registry the way as described works for
all of my systems having an external drive and there are no more system
restore points. Again, trying out is the best advice that I can give.

I'll give a try.

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