System Restore for Vista seems very downgraded from XP

[Guest]

I'm really frustrated with System Restore for Vista. At times it keeps a
whole list of restore points. At other times, it wipes most of them out only
leaving a handful. Yesterday I installed 5 games, shrinking my 150GB Western
Digital Raptor down to "only" 70 GB free space. And yet, all that is
available via system restore is 3 recent restore points. Nothing else!

Also I selected 1 new completely blank and empty 100GB hard drive to use in
System restore with the checkbox, but, it is not using that drive.

Am I missing something?

 

[Richard Urban]

System Restore backups and saves the drive that is checked *TO* the drive
that is checked. If there is nothing on the drive, nothing will be backed up
(no restore point will be created) - hence there is nothing to restore for
that drive.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Guest]

:

It also depends on how much space you have allocated to SR and how many
changes are make to a drive.
So if you don't make a lot of changes then it can have more restore
points(becasue they are smaller) but if one day you make a big change to the
drive it would have a lot of files to backup and if your allocated space is
near it's limits it would have to delete older points to make room.

If you really think you need lots of restore points then give more space to
system restore to use. But really how many restore points does one need?

 

[Guest]

When setting up a new system, with flaky drivers that are out there for
Windows Vista 64, and trying various combinations. It's nice to have a suite
of points. With XP I had probably a month of daily checkpoints. I had about
8 yesterday and they all disappeared after installing a few games except for
points near installing games. I don't care about checkpoints around
installing games. I like my 'driver install' checkpoints.

I can't find where to allocate extra space in the clumsy system restore
interface, but I'll keep poking around.

 

[Guest]

All your restore points are still there. You are just looking at the most
recent ones. Delve further in that window, lol.

 

[Jerry]

Why use Restore Points? Restoring from restore points has always suspect
even with XP. Vista has the best imaging utility built in I have ever used.
It backs up about anyway you want it to <files or whole hard drives>. It
will backup to DVD or to the hard drive. It is fast and reliable, so why
NOT use it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Why use Restore Points? Restoring from restore points has always suspect
even with XP. Vista has the best imaging utility built in I have ever used.
It backs up about anyway you want it to <files or whole hard drives>. It
will backup to DVD or to the hard drive. It is fast and reliable, so why
NOT use it.

System Restore and backup are really two entirely different things.
Neither substitutes for the other and I recommend that everyone do
*both*.

System Restore does nothing to protect your personal data files (the
primary focus of backing up), but it's a quick and easy way to revert
the operating system (not your data) to the condition it was in a day,
or a few days, ago, and that's all. It is a very useful feature, one
that has gotten me and many others out of trouble many times.

I strongly recommend that it *not* be turned off.