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System Restore Wastage?

God
Grafter
Posts: 1,112
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

System Restore Wastage?

On my XP box System Restore seems to be helping itself to 45gig of space on my non system drives. Perhaps I am being thick but I can’t see what it would be used for on a non system drive?
So, either SR just likes to grab 12% of all hard drives and once it has used the space on one moves to the next or it does something I don’t know about on non system drives, could someone enlighten me? Clearly I am itching to get my hands back on the 45gig!  Grin
12 REPLIES 12
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Go to Control Panel / System / System Restore and you can change the restore space either for all drives or for each drive individually.
I have my data drive set to 2% which is still 3.5GB
God
Grafter
Posts: 1,112
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Hi Jim thanks for the reply. I know how to turn it off or reduce its disk usage, what I was really interested in was what function (if any) it serves on a non sytem drive.
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Agh sorry - misunderstood.
The answer depends what you do on the non system drive.
I use it for most of my programs (except for windows. office, security etc.) and it should allow a roll back for any .exe files and similar application related files if there are problems. It doesn't monitor straight data files so if you are only storing data it's a waste of time.
EDIT
Knew I 'd seen it somewhere - this is a list of the monitored file types http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa378870.aspx
God
Grafter
Posts: 1,112
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Excellent. I will be re-caliming that space as I only use the non system disks for data and backups. cheers.
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
Thanks: 582
Fixes: 20
Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

I don't know how these restore points work...
Would I be correct in guessing that a restore point is just an incremental backup of .exe, .dll files etc + maybe a full backup of the registry?

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

minkey
Rising Star
Posts: 418
Thanks: 15
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Registered: ‎22-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Are you sure its XP system restore points?. I know that Dell machines have a funtion to restore your computer to its 'out-of-the box' condition when you press a certain combination of buttons and this is where it stores the disk image.
Just a thought.
Jeff
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

The Dell system restore is totally different. It uses a disk image which takes it back to the original shipped condition and you lose everything you have done on that disk since the computer was shipped. Whether or not you can create a new image yourself I don't know but I doubt it.
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

Some Dells, IBMs and HP laptops had system restore partitions containing the factory installed configuration. You then booted off a CD to perform the factory restore or in some case an XP repair.
Others had a recovery CD containing the factory setup.
You can't create your own.
Peter_Vaughan
Grafter
Posts: 14,469
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

It is only there to allow a factory restore of the system and serves no other purpose so can be removed if you have alternate ways to restore the system to a known point. Thus gaining a few extra Gigs.
God
Grafter
Posts: 1,112
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

My recollection is that when you access the Dell hidden restore partition that it will allow you to burn a Windows disk to restore your machine to shipping state. Then after you have made the CD the partition is wiped and the space is available to be used.
You only get one shot at burning your backup Dell Windows CD as it is meant to be some sort of anti piracy measure. This is of course assuming you haven’t already backed up the hidden partition with Acronis. If you have you can restore it and re-burn your CD if you need to.
samuria
Grafter
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: System Restore Wastage?

With Acronis you can create a secure zone which is a hidden partion just like the Dell ones. It thenn gives you an option to do a restore at startup by pressing F11.
You can set it up to backup by its self to the secure zone so you dont need system restore.
It has the supper fast restore so it will boot and add the system as it goes so if you start say word and its not restored yet it will do it straight away for you