Permenant System restore.

[Guest]

Hello All,
I will be installing a software which will take lot of space and resource. I
know at some point in time, say after 6 months, I will want to do a system
restore. But from the Microsoft documentation, looks like I cannot create a
system restore point, which will remain permanently. It gets automatically
deleted after some time. Can I copy the system restore file generated, and
save it at a different place, and then use this file to system restore
whenever I want to - say after 6 months or a year?
If I can , then what are the files I need to copy?
Thanks
Prashant H. K.

 

[Malke]

Hello All,
I will be installing a software which will take lot of space and
resource. I know at some point in time, say after 6 months, I will
want to do a system restore. But from the Microsoft documentation,
looks like I cannot create a system restore point, which will remain
permanently. It gets automatically deleted after some time. Can I copy
the system restore file generated, and save it at a different place,
and then use this file to system restore whenever I want to - say
after 6 months or a year? If I can , then what are the files I need to
copy? Thanks
Prashant H. K.

No. You need imaging software like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost.

Malke

 

[What's in a Name?]

Hello All,
I will be installing a software which will take lot of space and
resource. I know at some point in time, say after 6 months, I will
want to do a system restore. But from the Microsoft documentation,
looks like I cannot create a system restore point, which will
remain permanently. It gets automatically deleted after some time.
Can I copy the system restore file generated, and save it at a
different place, and then use this file to system restore whenever
I want to - say after 6 months or a year? If I can , then what are
the files I need to copy? Thanks
Prashant H. K.

You need to use something like Ghost to make an image of your drive.
-max

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Look at using a disk imaging software system. This should create a hard
drive image (one CD/DVD or spanned across several) whuch you could restore
back at a later time. This is usually known as a System Recovery set, which
most name-brand laptops/PCs often use.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Everyone. Is there something free available to do this disk imaging?

 

[Malke]

Thanks Everyone. Is there something free available to do this disk
imaging?

You can try BootIT NG. It isn't free, but it is very reasonable.
However, it is pretty geeky to use. YMMV.

Malke

 

[Guest]

there are also quite a few programs out there that will do the same thing as
windows system restore, but they'll let you keep those restore points for as
long as you want. check out www.download.com

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

Image for Windows (and its DOS companion) contain the same imaging features as BootIt NG, without the partition management features.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html

 

[Uncle John]

Hi Prashant

It is not clear from your first post - "I know at some point in time, say
after 6 months, I will want to do a system restore" - whether
(a) you will want to restore the system to the way it was when the
installation completed initially
or
(b) you want to be able to recover from a disastrous crash along the line
some time in the future

For (a) " return to zero", system restore is no good because it does not
restore the whole of your system but only significant system files to system
that is still working an can be accessed at least in Safe Mode. However your
(a) implies that your system is not completely crashed and that you want a
free backup utility. I suggest you make a small partition on your hard disk
and use the native NTBackup - Start\Run\NTBackup.
Follow the prompts to backup everything to file.At any time you can
restore from the file using NT Backup with overwrite enabled. If, however
you want to be protected against a system crash in which all you internal
hard drive(s) are lost, you need to buy a good utility like Acronis
TrueImage which can create and restore backups from external media to a new
or reformatted disk or install a tape drive and use NTBackup to save your
system to tape. The last system is the most expensive but most reliable and
enables systematic archiving over a long period.

Of course for (b) "recover from a non-fatal error" system restore is fine.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Uncle John for the detailed explanation.
I just want to go back to the way my computer was before I intall this large
applcation.
So by your explanation, looks like system restore is fine for me.

one ? though about ntbackup
is NTbackup=system restore + personal file recover?

Thanks
Prashant H. K.

 

[Uncle John]

No NTBackup is a fairly old utility and intended principally for archiving
systems to tape. Unfortunately it does not write to CD's or DVD's but it as
i said it will save to a file on hard disk.
I think that you would be OK with System Restore and the fact that you can
uninstall the application.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Uncle John

No NTBackup is a fairly old utility and intended principally for archiving
systems to tape. Unfortunately it does not write to CD's or DVD's but it as
i said it will save to a file on hard disk.
I think that you would be OK with System Restore and the fact that you can
uninstall the application.