Do you use or keep enabled "System Restore"? (Windonws 7)

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Coldblackice

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In Windows 7, do you keep the "System Restore" function enabled? And if so, do you ever have to use it for anything (and what)?



I've always disabled the function, feeling that it's a hodgepodge function for people who just need a quick and easy "undo" function for their computers, not being able to troubleshoot themselves. And it takes a hefty chunk of precious SSD space.

So I'm curious if any of you keep it enabled, and if so, how/when/why it's ever relied on.
 
If you have an SSD then it is highly recommended that you disable it.
 
I always disable to squeeze every last bit of performance...I frequently reformat so I don't need to roll back anything
 
No, my personal computer does not have anything majorly important. Any personal info is stored to another drive and saved to other places as well. If the computer crashes, ill just reinstall things. No biggie.
 
Yes, it is one of the greatest features ever. It's great for undelete, it's great for backups.
 
Nope.. Backup my HD with a Ghost program every few months. All important data is on 2nd HD.. Where the OS isn't installed.
 
wonderfield said:
Has Microsoft or any drive manufacturer recommended disabling System Restore on SSD systems?
Click to expand...

Nope...and if its only to save a few GB's then that is a stupid reason as you can adjust the size to begin with. They don't recommend anything but turning off defrag, which should be done automatically if the OS detects it right.
 
I find system restore to be hit or miss even when you have a problem. Probably not worth the SSD space if you know how to fix Windows without it.
 
System Restore is a great feature.
Its saved many systems from a lot of work or a re-install.

ie iTunes screwed the internet up on a clients PC.
Rolling back to a previous restore point made it functional, installing iTunes again stopped web access, proving the culprit.
He stopped his daughter installing it.

I've used it many times when testing out if software is any good and have even rolled back a virus.
Its much better than leaving bloat in the registry and Windows repository.

I dont relish spending hours troubleshooting something that can be fixed easily.
Even if something can be fixed, time constraints can mean that a reinstall is the only viable solution. Being able to roll back the problem can be a godsend.
Op, if you want to think of it being a lazy mans choice, more you the fool lol.

therat said:
If you have an SSD then it is highly recommended that you disable it.
Click to expand...
Why?
 
I disable in to save space.

Once when I used System Restore on XP, it wiped out a bunch of user files. Haven't trusted it since.

If I'm in a jam where my system is screwed up, I'd rather reinstall anyways.
 
I always disable it because I make the host OS very stable. I have VMs when I want to do experiments.
 
Nenu said:
Why?
Click to expand...

My only guess could be that it's an attempt to conserve writes on the disk, since back when SSDs first started becoming popular, the devices had attainable limits on the number of writes that could be made to a block on an SSD. I haven't done any 'lab research' on this, but my guess would be that the actual amount of writing that gets done by system restore is relatively trivial and non-detrimental to the life of a modern SSD.
 
wonderfield said:
Has Microsoft or any drive manufacturer recommended disabling System Restore on SSD systems?
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Not Microsoft as far as I know but just check out the forums of most SSD makes and do some reading. Most recommend that System Restore be disabled.
 
therat said:
Not Microsoft as far as I know but just check out the forums of most SSD makes and do some reading. Most recommend that System Restore be disabled.
Click to expand...

Are these official recommendations by the SSD manufacturers themselves, or are these recommendations of users on said forums? Sadly, most 'experts' on the internet are not always correct in their recommendations.
 
therat said:
Not Microsoft as far as I know but just check out the forums of most SSD makes and do some reading. Most recommend that System Restore be disabled.
Click to expand...
Many also believed that page files would thrash solid state drives until Microsoft published a technical note on the subject. Many still believe that disabling Windows services yields performance gains, even without so much as a shred of benchmarking to back it up.

There's a lot of voodoo when it comes to these types of things, and self-proclaimed experts are often misguided, make the wrong assumptions about any data they gather or have some sort of God complex. That's not to say that they're wrong in this case — maybe they're right — but it's a lot of jumping at shadows without good, authoritative data.
 
Dogs said:
Are these official recommendations by the SSD manufacturers themselves, or are these recommendations of users on said forums? Sadly, most 'experts' on the internet are not always correct in their recommendations.
Click to expand...

Recommendations from experienced users AFAIK.

I've used SSDs for some years now and always disable system restore. I much prefer to use either Ghost or True Image to create a full disk image.
 
trick0502 said:
There is no way you're serious?!?!
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It's a great feature, it allows me to access files locked for my backups. (Otherwise the backup program either has to raw read the disk, which has been known to mess up, or wait for the lock to clear.) It also can reveal rootkits that would hide files otherwise.

I am a big fan of it, why shouldn't I be?

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
Has saved me a couple times when Windows Update or some other software install has trashed the computer.

Had a major one a couple weeks ago where Windows Update completely disabled HomeGroup and file sharing on my server. It showed it to all be working, but nothing could see the computer and it couldn't see anything else.

Did a system restore from pre Windows Update and within 20 minutes I was back up and running again.

Now I assume your not talking about "Backup & Restore", because that is also a very handy tool for when things go REAL bad, or if you need to upgrade your hard drive.

Storage space is moot now-a-days, anything that helps save my ass and is transparent to my daily usage is worthwhile to me.
 
It should be left on unless you are really short on space.

And I wish it had a better, more user friendly UI. I don't mean the Star Wars spacefield like Time Machine, but something a little more accessible. Since I guarantee that 99% of people right now on Win 7/8 have no idea what it is, let alone how to use it.

It's why MS keeps changing or deprecating things like File Histroy/Backup/full system image, no user really knows how to use these things.
 
Always have the System Restore enabled. I'm work in IT and it has saved me numerous reinstalls and even 4 hour virus-removing.
But be careful when you have the computer in domain, it may "forget" trust after system restore.
 
I keep it on and use it occasionally. It has saved me the trouble of reformatting a couple times, but just as often I'll discover that an issue has been around longer than I realized and rolling back didn't fix it.

Lately I've been sticking to back-up images with Macrium Reflect. I make a new one roughly every 2-3 weeks and kill off really old ones.
 
In years of Windows use, I've hardly ever used System Restore. But I did just use it yesterday. I recently changed a machine from XP to Win 7 Home Premium and I disabled automatic updates right off the bat. Yesterday I rebooted the machine and all of a sudden Windows was trying to automatically install updates. I saw that it had downloaded 40 or 50 something important updates and said it would install them later. Somehow automatic updates had become enabled. I immediately disabled automatic updates again and checked for updates and then there were only about 10 important updates. I thought that Windows might've got confused and somehow lost track of like 30+ important updates that would then never be installed. So I reverted to a system restore point from before Windows downloaded those updates, and checked for updates again to see where the discrepancy was coming from. It turned out that it's due to the absurd way that Windows categorizes updates, which I didn't know about:

(Too bad Microsoft's web developers don't know how to create linkable content, or I'd just link to this instead of quoting...sigh.)

Understanding Windows automatic updating

If you selected Use recommended settings when you set up Windows Update, then recommended updates will be shown together with important updates. If you selected Install important updates only, recommended updates will be shown together with optional updates
Click to expand...

So after I figured that out, I just used the Undo System Restore feature and was back where I started (hopefully). So I'd say it was helpful in this case.

For actual backups of my Windows installation, I've also been using Macrium Reflect (free edition).
 
On mine and most machines, I only allow it 1% space: enough to recover from some freak driver update or corruption. I always disable it before virus removal. But more importantly, i have a Windows Home Server 2011 which does full differential system image backups over the network. That and its business counterparts have saved my ass on several occasions many many hours and headaches.
 
Dogs said:
For those of you who do not use the feature, is there any particular reason why you bother to disable it?
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I have never had a system restore fix an issue, at work or free lance. I do not bother disabling at work, at home i do.
Not wasting disk space etc.
 
Snufykat said:
Not wasting disk space etc.
Click to expand...

But by default, system restore will only use at most 5% and in practice much, much less than that (in most cases, under 3 gigs). Is ~3 gigs that large of an issue? I view it as cheap insurance. I've never needed it, but it only takes up around a gig or two for me and if I ever were to need it it'd be there.
 
I leave it on if I'm working on any computers. Several times I've accidentally deleted programs that monitor the wifi instead of windows without switching it over *banghead*.

System restore always brings it back.
 
I leave it enabled. The amount of space you dedicate to it can be easily changed, at the expense of pushing out older copies of files quicker. I set it at 5GB max on a 250GB SSD.

It can come in handy when going through previous versions of files, especially between backups. I do full backups only every 6 months... important stuff backed up monthly because I'm too lazy to do it more often.

As a fix to roll back the system to a working state? I haven't done that in years.
 
pxc said:
I leave it enabled. The amount of space you dedicate to it can be easily changed, at the expense of pushing out older copies of files quicker. I set it at 5GB max on a 250GB SSD.

It can come in handy when going through previous versions of files, especially between backups. I do full backups only every 6 months... important stuff backed up monthly because I'm too lazy to do it more often.

As a fix to roll back the system to a working state? I haven't done that in years.
Click to expand...

I've rolled back changes several times. Notably video drivers that rendered Windows unbootable normally.
 
I never used it on XP but in 7/8, it works really well. I has saved me a lot of re-installs
 
nope. tried once in xp a decade ago and it didnt fix shit. left disabled since.
 
Dogs said:
But by default, system restore will only use at most 5% and in practice much, much less than that (in most cases, under 3 gigs). Is ~3 gigs that large of an issue? I view it as cheap insurance. I've never needed it, but it only takes up around a gig or two for me and if I ever were to need it it'd be there.
Click to expand...

As stated at the start of my post, i have never had system restore fix any issue when i have tried to use it.
It does not matter how cheap insurance is if when you need it it does not work!!!!
 
Snufykat said:
As stated at the start of my post, i have never had system restore fix any issue when i have tried to use it.
It does not matter how cheap insurance is if when you need it it does not work!!!!
Click to expand...

Dunno what your issues were...but it saved my arse in the last few days yet again. Windows Update got bricked by one of many Critical Updates and ceased calling home despite all troubleshooting...thanks to System Restore and lots of reboots I narrowed it down to which of 11 Patch Tuesday critical updates was doing it, and have working Win Update again


Fucking KB2868626
 
Coldblackice said:
In Windows 7, do you keep the "System Restore" function enabled? And if so, do you ever have to use it for anything (and what)?
Click to expand...

Absolutely. It's wonderful for when an update goes awry. BTW it takes a default of 15% of your disk space, which can be changed by using the VSSADMIN utility.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Absolutely. It's wonderful for when an update goes awry. BTW it takes a default of 15% of your disk space, which can be changed by using the VSSADMIN utility.
Click to expand...

Why bother using a utility to set the size when Windows itself does a great job of letting you set the size. Just go to Control Panel > System and Security > System. Click on "System Protection" on the left side of the window. Scroll down to your C drive and click on it and then click on "Configure. Set the amount to whatever you size you want and click "apply". Done.

A quicker way is to just right click "Computer" and click "Properties" on the bottom of the menu. That will take you straight to the System window.

cheers
 
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