Win XP system restore function

[dakels]

I have had to use this recently due to a bad install and it worked flawlessly. It was like I stepped in some time machine. Everything appeared to be exactly how it was when the restore point was captured.
My question: Do you use system restore or would you recommend ghosting (or similar) the partition instead and why?
Does leaving the system restore monitoring give any significant performance penalties? Just takes up space correct?

 

[eraser]

There is no performance penalty during normal operations. I believe before/after a software install it takes a snapshop of system. Same thing on startup of windows. It will run constantly in the background, but in an idle state. Worst case, it takes up hard drive space, and system memory.

Eraser

 

[dunkster]

While 'System Restore' is an absolutely terrific OS feature, it is useless if your HD or other system component fails or your OS gets scrambled while overclocking.

When a major system failure occurs, there is no safer complete-recovery strategy than having your (custom-tweaked) system partition and your critical data partition safely Ghosted to CDRs.

Think of 'System Restore' as a very nice feature, and Ghost as a complete safety net.

Hope this helps!

 

[dakels]

aah thanks!

Well.... my main system partition (Apps too) is well over 20 gigs (Got lots of apps in there, program folder is 18gig ). But I have a DVD+RW burner
I would be wise for me to burn an image to the DVD+RW's via ghost. I never used ghost for DVD+RW, does it work ok?

btw the main rig is
dell 2.66ghz
80gig maxtor 8mb cache
2 40 gig partitions one for OS and one for data
80gig maxtor 8mb cache
1 60 gig partition for data
1 20 gig partition for scratch space and temp files

NEC 4x DVD+RW

 

[dunkster]

I don't know if there is a version of Ghost that is DVD+RW compatible. I use Ghost version from SystemWorks Pro 2002, which isn't. You might check 2003 versions or DriveImage for DVD+RW compatability.

I also install what I consider 'critical' apps and utilities on the System partition with the OS, primarily so I can quickly recover everything without any re-installing or re-tweaking. But any apps or utilities that are not in the 'critical' category are NOT on the System partition. My System partition is 8GB, with about 4GB used (image spans 3 cdrs in highest compression). I consider trial apps, trial utilities and games as non-critical and disperse them to other partitions.

Same with data. All data I consider 'critical' (.doc, .xls, images, drivers, zips, etc.) are organized in Data partition, and imaged regularly (image spans 2 cdrs).

I have other partitions for non-critical stuff, which I can afford to lose. Why bother imaging/restoring trivial stuff?

There really isn't any 'right way', just what works for you.

Hope this helps!

 

[BlueWeasel]

Dunkster's recommendation is right on, except I take mine a little further.

I only install Windows XP, major updates and SP1, hardware drivers, and essential apps. I make sure to delete all the "left over" installation files from SP1 and Windows Update, with only 2.1gb of space being used on C:\. This allows me to get the entire ghost file on 1 CD.

It really doesn't matter with CD-Rs so cheap these days, but its just easier to deal with 1 CD instead of multiple discs.

 

[dakels]

thanks for the replies. Thats all well and good and I am no stranger to conventional backing up, but I'm curious as to how the System Restore technology works. It must use some sort of compression/parity to use up such a relatively small amount of space for the data. If it uses only 12% of the HD space it's going to back up, thats about a 1:8 ratio. Thats pretty amazing. Then to confuse me even more it can save multiple restore points. Thats a whole different image. I was relating this to conventional backup systems that make a complete backup image, and partials. The partials only record the differences from the complete so as to save space. Therefore if you have a complete backup image of 4 gigs and you make a new backup image, it will just record the differences from first complete image, which may only be a 200mb ifference. Therefore giving you a new restore point of only that 200mb instead of a whole new 4gig image. But then, windows must be using some sort of wicked compression system then to keep an 8:1 ratio or so. Or it uses some sort of "drive image snapshot" that may record all the bits in place but not needing the contents of all the data... something I know nothing about. A snapshot doesn't make sense to me either since everything must be referenced from something. For instance, how do you record a 30 number serial, without writing the actual numbers down? Am I making any sense?

I could see if the System Restore doesn's record empty space to achieve that 1:8, 12% usage to record the data, but I have used it on drives that are 80% full and yet System Restore gave me back everything in perfect order down to the exact minute I made that Restore point image.

Does System Restore work without a system in place? Can I offload that Restore point image to a removable media to create an exact duplicate on another HD? I dont think so. So it must use some sort of partial backup method as I spoke of before, therefore not making a true complete backup image.

thoughts? yanno come to think of it microshaft must have a white paper on this somewhere. But I'd like to hear more practical usage information about this. Essentially I'd love to be able to offload a restore point to DVD+RW then recover right from the DVD or CD to bring me back to a restore time and point of my large system partitions. If this is unmaneagable, I also have multiple drives on every computer and network admin resources. It would be nice to offload System restore points to another drive or removable media without requiring a full size image.

BTW I already have a "critical" system partition. I boot to win 2k pro for any heavy projects that requuire rendering of some kind, audio and video. This partition is streamlined and unbloated with uncritical software and features. Its only about 3gig and I image that over the network to another computer. Then the work files are copied over a network for backup and written to DVD+RW. I'd still like a fast recovery of my main bloated to hell XP system partition. It would take me days to reinstall all that software and games and utilities. The XP partition is expendible to a point. Maybe It would be better to have a smaller OS only partition to be able quick format when need be but imaging would have to be done with each new install would it not, or I'd have a desync between my System folder and my applications that may installed files on my system partition.