System Restore?

Drakon · Jan 29, 2005, 12:28 AM

Is system restore really needed? i know it's convient to have running in case an installation goes wrong and u can "rollback" to a previous state. i currently have it turned off on both my drives, but was wondering if i should turn it back on. also how much space should i give to it? i have 2x 160GB hd's, but i have them partitioned.

TJ- · Jan 29, 2005, 01:29 AM

when something goes wrong you will wish you had it turned on, like when i messed up the xp settings and nothing would work, if i had it turned on i could have used system restore, but nooooooo i had to reinstall windows.... will be kept on from now on.

Dark Lord · Jan 29, 2005, 01:38 AM

its a nice back up to have on. its saved my ass more then once.

CDsDontBurn · Jan 29, 2005, 01:46 AM

hahaha.....i say screw system restore. That's one of the first things i disable when i reinstall windows

. However, if you want to leave it on, i'd say give about 10% of your total HDD (for every HDD) space to system restore.

Judas · Jan 29, 2005, 02:44 AM

if you good with reinstalling windows easily, no point in having System restore in my opinion... just a waist of system resources...

Chaos · Jan 29, 2005, 08:55 AM

one thing i dont like about it is the fact that if you happen to get a virus that you are not imediately aware of and power off your system. System restore will back up your virus with it's restore point

PangingJr · Jan 29, 2005, 09:41 AM

Every time you successfully start XP in normal mode, the OS makes a record of all currently installed drivers and the contents of the registry key HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet. This record comes in handy if you install a driver or make a hardware configuration change that causes your system to hang at startup. When XP displays the Startup Recovery menu, you can choose the Last Known Good(LKG) Configuration option. This menu choice restores the previous, working registry key, effectively removing the changes that are causing the problem.

The LKG configuration is the recovery choice of first resort when your system won't boot. try using it first. if you get the XP to boot, then you can run System Restore(SR) if necessary.
SR can't be run unless you can boot to normal or a safe mode. That's the practical difference.

But if you suspect that a driver change is causing system problems and you do not have a recent System Restore point to go back to, do not log on in normal mode. As soon as you log on in normal mode, XP resets the LKG configuration information, effectively removing your safety net. If you suspect problems, start XP in Safe Mode and do basic troubleshooting first. Logging on in Safe Mode does not update the LKG configuration information, so you can safely roll back to the LKG configuration if Safe Mode troubleshooting is unsuccessful.

In general, the SR is a more reliable alternative than the LKG configuration menu choice, because it restores all Windows system files and the entire registry rather than just a single key.

SR is the recovery option of first choice if your system boots, but if you know it was caused by a driver update, then the Roll Back Driver is preferred, since it is more specific than the SR.

System Restore in XP is an incredible space hog. It might be worth it, if System Restore were a truly complete and foolproof form of backup, but it's not. At best, System Restore can and will get the core operating system running again after a bad crash, but it doesn't return all files to the pre-trouble state, and it can't remove all traces of a program that went bad. As a result, System Restore's usefulness is limited, and so should be its appetite for disk space. Ane One cannot selectively backup or store individual Restore Points. You may want to consider using a disk imaging program, such as Norton Ghost, Paragon Drive Backup, Symantec Drive Image.

germanjulian · Jan 29, 2005, 09:57 AM

You may want to consider using a disk imaging program, such as Norton Ghost, Paragon Drive Backup, Symantec Drive Image!

just as Ctrl-Alt-Del said.

system restore does not save your a** every time! drive image will! works great.

Sandok · Jan 29, 2005, 10:13 AM

any of those free?

Drakon · Jan 29, 2005, 11:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sandok

any of those free?

yeah, are they?

germanjulian · Jan 29, 2005, 11:19 AM

depends guys

drive image is by far the best one. but you need to use a floppy with the sata drives if you want to restore. backup is done in windows while running windows even! great, takes 2 minutes (i keep my games on seperate partition.

norton ghost doesnt work with sata.