System Restore and folders on laptop and EHD's.

[Steven Hopper]

Now in process of moving all of one of my EHD's files to another EHD, so as
to allow me to format the now FAT32 EHD to NTSC.

I checked the drive's hidden folders and I was surprised to find a System
Volume Information folder containing restore points. Apparently this's
normal whenever an EHD is online when a restore point is made.

Also I noticed the EHD's RP numbering sequences indicates that the EHD's
aren't being wiped of older RP's as what seems to be happening to the ones
on my pc's partitioned D drive (ie; only RP's less than 3 mos old are listed
as available RP's).

I mention that as I see the EHD has RP2 2/20/08, RP3 3/21/08 and the rest
are RP461 to RP473 (dated from 8/27/07 to 2/12/08).

In checking the pc's available system restore points, only 2 RP's are listed
(dated as 2/14/08 and 3/21/08), but oddly there's no 2/14/08 RP on the EHD
and instead it has one dated 2/20/08, so what's up with that?

Anyway, it seems whenever system restore saves/makes RP's, any EHD (then
online) also has a copy of that RP stored on the EHD.

Kind of makes sense and as such I'm guessing users should know more about
system restore because it looks like depending on how system restore looks
for things to restore.

I'm guessing that an available restore point might only actually work if all
drives that were online for that stored RP are also again online, no?

Or would/should system restore go ahead and overlook any drive or drives not
also online when the RP was created?

Either way, I suspect my last viable restore point is 3/21/08 as its listed
both on the EHD and in SR's available RP(s), and I suspect that there's a
file in system restore that requires correlations between all drives and
RP's, such that restore will only work when all drives are present and the
dates match up.

Lastly, I'm also a bit concerned that my only hopefully viable existing
system restore point could be compromised by my formatting the EHD, even if
I cut/paste the system volume information folder back onto the re-formatted
EHD.

These apparent idiosyncrasies about RP's might well explain why users seem
to be losing RP's and/or they're not working, no?

 

[db ´¯`·.. >]

you can convert
to ntfs without a
reformat:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb456984.aspx

 

[Bill in Co.]

Now in process of moving all of one of my EHD's files to another EHD, so
as
to allow me to format the now FAT32 EHD to NTSC.

I checked the drive's hidden folders and I was surprised to find a System
Volume Information folder containing restore points. Apparently this's
normal whenever an EHD is online when a restore point is made.

And apparently not only for an EHD, but also on a second partition of the
main hard drive, too, at least in my case. And those restore points are
NOT the same as on the C: partition. In fact, after looking at a few of
them on the D: partition (their date-time-stamps), I can see (at least so
far) that they weren't the ones I was creating because they don't match the
time points shown when you run System Restore and look at its calendar in
there. Why these others ones are here, I haven't a clue.

Also I noticed the EHD's RP numbering sequences indicates that the EHD's
aren't being wiped of older RP's as what seems to be happening to the ones
on my pc's partitioned D drive (ie; only RP's less than 3 mos old are
listed
as available RP's).

I mention that as I see the EHD has RP2 2/20/08, RP3 3/21/08 and the rest
are RP461 to RP473 (dated from 8/27/07 to 2/12/08).

In checking the pc's available system restore points, only 2 RP's are
listed
(dated as 2/14/08 and 3/21/08), but oddly there's no 2/14/08 RP on the EHD
and instead it has one dated 2/20/08, so what's up with that?

Anyway, it seems whenever system restore saves/makes RP's, any EHD (then
online) also has a copy of that RP stored on the EHD.

Not necessarily, as I explained above. At least over here (on the second
partition), they are not completely identical, because although they may
have identical RP numbers, the date-time-stamps are different. So one
might logically assume they are different restore points (even though the RP
numbers may be the same, since they are all sequential).

 

[Nepatsfan]

Now in process of moving all of one of my EHD's files to another EHD, so as
to allow me to format the now FAT32 EHD to NTSC.

I checked the drive's hidden folders and I was surprised to find a System
Volume Information folder containing restore points. Apparently this's
normal whenever an EHD is online when a restore point is made.

Also I noticed the EHD's RP numbering sequences indicates that the EHD's
aren't being wiped of older RP's as what seems to be happening to the ones
on my pc's partitioned D drive (ie; only RP's less than 3 mos old are listed
as available RP's).

I mention that as I see the EHD has RP2 2/20/08, RP3 3/21/08 and the rest
are RP461 to RP473 (dated from 8/27/07 to 2/12/08).

In checking the pc's available system restore points, only 2 RP's are listed
(dated as 2/14/08 and 3/21/08), but oddly there's no 2/14/08 RP on the EHD
and instead it has one dated 2/20/08, so what's up with that?

Anyway, it seems whenever system restore saves/makes RP's, any EHD (then
online) also has a copy of that RP stored on the EHD.

Kind of makes sense and as such I'm guessing users should know more about
system restore because it looks like depending on how system restore looks
for things to restore.

I'm guessing that an available restore point might only actually work if all
drives that were online for that stored RP are also again online, no?

Or would/should system restore go ahead and overlook any drive or drives not
also online when the RP was created?

Either way, I suspect my last viable restore point is 3/21/08 as its listed
both on the EHD and in SR's available RP(s), and I suspect that there's a
file in system restore that requires correlations between all drives and
RP's, such that restore will only work when all drives are present and the
dates match up.

Lastly, I'm also a bit concerned that my only hopefully viable existing
system restore point could be compromised by my formatting the EHD, even if
I cut/paste the system volume information folder back onto the re-formatted
EHD.

These apparent idiosyncrasies about RP's might well explain why users seem
to be losing RP's and/or they're not working, no?

System Restore can be turned off for external hard drives or partitions on an
internal hard drive that contain only data. The reason for this is that System
Restore only monitors critical system files. Those files would be located by
default on your C drive. Personal files and data should be backed up. System
Restore will not help recover them.

For more info, take a look at this article.

Courtesy of Bert Kinney, MS-MVP
#15, Should I let System Restore monitor my external drive.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html

Good luck

Nepatsfan