Do You Use System Protection aka System Restore?

Just a trivia FYI, System Restore was also available on the dreaded ME, then again I am like 1 of 6 in the world who still owns such a beast. As far as ME goes, I shut it off long ago.

I do use it on my XP machines though, least until I finish what looks like a steady migration to Ubuntu. (Currently 5 of my 7 machines.)

Hi Lumpy,
Thanks for the reminder. I completely forgot about ME.
Regards, Ron

Despite the fact that I use Acronis True Image to make regular backups, I keep system restore turned on. It’s a quick and easy method of correcting small “glitches”. If your hard drives aren’t big enough to handle a small thing like that, ya shoulda thought ahead, i.e. get big enough ones in the first place.

Thanks Buffet. I do the same. Restore is on and Acronis to image the hard disk.

First thing I do with a new Windows installation is turn this feature off. Aside from the fact it might take up considerable space (or used to considering the small hard drives in the past), I never trusted it to revert back to a previous state without side effects. Maybe it does? I don’t know.

I believe that if I’ve reached a point where restoring is necessary, and this happens rarely, I would have liked to just format the hard drive. Although a bit time consuming, there’s nothing better than a clean install.

On the other hand, I do make regular backups to what I think is important so restoring is not as critical. I could always recover data from the hard drive anyway.

System Restore works well – it saved my bacon a few times. The disk space argument is not really valid. You can set it. By default it is set to 12% of partition space (in XP), which is too much. I set it to 3%, which allows enough space for a few restore points (you don’t need a restore point from last Easter!). If you have more than one partition, you can turn it off on all but the one where Windows is installed, because it will do nothing useful anywhere else.

From a tech support who takes phone call from customers who think that their computers come with free internet, and worry about losing their yahoo e-mails if they have to format their hard drive, system restore is awesometastic.

System Restore does a pretty fair job when its needed. If you just installed Bill and Ted’s awesome antivirus and for some reason your network connections have turned to a black hole that lead to nowhere, system restore can work its magic and you are back to youtube and facebook in no time. Your antivirus will no longer function, but just uninstall and get the latest version (the one that is compatible with your system) and most of the time its alive and kickin after 20 minutes rather than a 4 hour format/image/reinstall/update/update/update routine.

Never had any use for the feature Ron, as I’ve been an avid supporter of Acronis for years now. I’m not concerned about filling up my hard drive, but rather “WHY” ? Of course, this is one topic that can go back and forth, depending on who’s been doing it either way. No right or wrong way but rather a matter of personal preference Ron. Oh, I’d question Neil on 4 hours, and why he would format the hd and then do a restore? I guess I read it quick, but my image backup sessions using Acronis never run more than 12 to 15 minutes, and for a Restore, about the same … 20 minutes tops. Of course, it all depends on how much data is on the hard drive. I’m still old school Ron: programs on the hard drive and files on removable media such as external hd, flash drive, etc.

Don,
When I read Neil’s comments I was surpised as well. It would seem that after he formats and gets Windows installed with all of his stuff and programs, apps. whatever, that her would use Acronis to make an image. Than the next time he wants to do a clean install, he can just reimage the drive and be back in minutes.

Later, Ron