Problems with System Restore and mass storage device

[Jack]

XP Home. Added a FAT32 pre-formatted USB external drive. XP correctly
identified it in My Computer, grouped it under 'Hard Disk Drives' not
'Devices with Removable Storage' and System Restore (SR) started to monitor
it and added a System Volume Information folder which I could open and
navigate through. I formatted the drive in NTFS and after when I try to open
the System Volume Information folder on the external drive root from an
administrator account it says 'E:\System Volume Information is not
accessible. Access is denied.' When I reboot to safe mode and login with the
built-in Administrator account access is still denied and the permissions on
the security tab of the properties sheet for this folder are all unchecked
and greyed out and I can find no way to take control of it. Added to this
the way SR views the external drive is erratic. Until I delete a file from
the external drive it is not noted on the System Properties SR tab, after
which it is marked as 'Offline' and its settings option is greyed out. If I
globally turn off SR with the external drive connected and then restart it
the external drive is then marked as 'Monitoring' and I can access its
settings and switch it to 'Turned Off' but after disconnecting the drive and
then reconnecting it is back to not being shown or marked as 'Offline'. Also
globally turning off SR with the external drive connected does not erase its
System Volume Information folder and if I defragment the drive it lists SR
change logs for E. I can live with all this inconsistency if it were not for
the creeping feeling that this is making all the restore points for C
corrupt and if I need to restore I will not be able to. Ideally I want the
external drive to consistently not be monitored by SR and be treated
entirely as a removable drive. Grateful for any help on this. Thanks.

 

[Jesse]

Since I got here first I will venture a guess-- I'll bet the experts are
going to say you should not have made the drive NTFS.

 

[Squire]

The System Restore, only restores system files,
not any other programs you installed.
As far as I know, you can use any format compatible with the drive.
Your external drive should have come with an installation disk.

 

[Bert Kinney]

XP Home. Added a FAT32 pre-formatted USB external drive. XP correctly
identified it in My Computer, grouped it under 'Hard Disk Drives' not
'Devices with Removable Storage' and System Restore (SR) started to
monitor it and added a System Volume Information folder which I could
open and navigate through. I formatted the drive in NTFS and after
when I try to open the System Volume Information folder on the
external drive root from an administrator account it says 'E:\System
Volume Information is not accessible. Access is denied.'

How to access the SVI folder on a NTFS partition:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#SRFileLocation

When I reboot to safe mode and login with the built-in Administrator
account
access is still denied and the permissions on the security tab of the
properties sheet for this folder are all unchecked and greyed out and
I can find no way to take control of it. Added to this the way SR
views the external drive is erratic. Until I delete a file from the
external drive it is not noted on the System Properties SR tab, after
which it is marked as 'Offline' and its settings option is greyed
out. If I globally turn off SR with the external drive connected and
then restart it the external drive is then marked as 'Monitoring' and
I can access its settings and switch it to 'Turned Off' but after
disconnecting the drive and then reconnecting it is back to not being
shown or marked as 'Offline'. Also globally turning off SR with the
external drive connected does not erase its System Volume Information
folder and if I defragment the drive it lists SR change logs for E.

System Restore places a SVI folder on every drive/partition it sees,
including external and some flash drives whether the partition is
monitored or not.

I can live with all this inconsistency if it were not for the creeping
feeling that this is making all the restore points for C corrupt and
if I need to restore I will not be able to. Ideally I want the
external drive to consistently not be monitored by SR and be treated
entirely as a removable drive. Grateful for any help on this. Thanks.

The best advise is to stop SR from monitoring the external drive each
time it's connected to the system.

For more information on System Restore and external drives.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#ExternalDrive