Missing most of my System Restore Points

dalchina · 16 Oct 2018

Please note that System Restore - which is great when restores work- has been found notoriously unreliable when restoring by a good many here. Quite often restoring simply fails with an error number and brief text, making no changes, even from Safe Mode.

Make sure you use disk imaging routinely - most here highly recommend Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for images. This restores whole partitions/ all the partitions needed for Windows - whatever you've selected- so is quite different to System Restore. Even if your disk fails or your PC is unbootable and not recoverable, you can recover.

RollbackRX is also interesting and quite different again; the free version should be good enough.

AndreTen · 16 Oct 2018

dalchina said:

Please note that System Restore - which is great when restores work- has been found notoriously unreliable when restoring by a good many here. Quite often restoring simply fails with an error number and brief text, making no changes, even from Safe Mode.

Make sure you use disk imaging routinely - most here highly recommend Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for images. This restores whole partitions/ all the partitions needed for Windows - whatever you've selected- so is quite different to System Restore. Even if your disk fails or your PC is unbootable and not recoverable, you can recover.

RollbackRX is also interesting and quite different again; the free version should be good enough.

Relying on Restore points is simply unproductive. It rarely works as you want it, why not just make it predictable.

eliuri · 16 Oct 2018

Hi:

I've never used anything like Macrium Reflect,. I'd have to learn a whole new way to back things up. I'm willing to go through the learning process. But it wont be easy. Something totally new...

My experience with System Restore has actually been quite positive. Usually, if i dont why why something went off kilter, i simply restore it to when it was working. I've used SR extensively over more than a decade and over several different operating systems. Seems like a very viable solution, when i cant figure out the cause. So its a feature I've come to be attached to. Though I'm very new to Windows 10...It's been very distressing and worrisome to me that this safety net which was there for me over the years when things went haywire might now be undermined in some way..

I am still hoping to get to the bottom of why Restore Points from only 2 days ago might disappear, leaving the most recent ones intact. Supposedly a RP is good for ~70 days or so...

I do see a task in my Task Scheduler which automatically creates RPs. It gives the date of my last automatic RP. As October 13. Which is about when I noticed that unexpected RP about some module or other...Possibly the operation which was discussed here earlier..However, I do not see the date/time for the next scheduled automatic RP. I'm wondering if this all might have something to do with the continually disappearing RPs as new ones are manually created. If its the case that I can schedule a regular RP creation..Hopefully several times daily, I'd be happy with this, as long as those remain viable and dont mysteriously disappear as well. So if any of this might point to some solution of this mystery and a path to resolution, kindly advise me on this.

Or if theres something else I might be overlooking, I'd appreciate it..

I will look into the Macrium thing once I settle into this PC and the new OS (Windows 10) that I'm nowusing..But for now, its all a bit overwhelming to me

Thanks again
-eli

dalchina · 16 Oct 2018

You could set up a scheduled task to create a daily restore point if you wish. There's a tutorial.
I have had that running for 2-3 years.

Last time I wanted to use a restore point it failed- even in Safe Mode.

Macrium Reflect has some simple videos on this site, and on youtube, and loads of documentation.

Basically you install it, run it, select what you want to image (there's a useful option for Windows which selects all the Windows partitions). All displayed in graphics.

Then you select the parameters/name/where to save the image file and so create a backup task.
That runs to create your first- base - image.

Next time, You rt click that task in MR's GUI, select Run Now, Differential. That creates a smaller image file representing the difference between now and your base image.

When you have those, you can restore any date for which you have an image
- base image alone
- any differential (+ the base image)

Windows 10 instructional videos by Ten Forums members - Page 69 - Windows 10 Forums

eliuri · 16 Oct 2018

Hi again:

I went into my system logs to see what might be causing those deletions. I did search there for "volsnap" which are the entries for system restore points. Here is what I'm finding for the logs of the deleted restore points:

"The oldest shadow copy of volume C: was deleted to keep disk space usage for shadow copies of volume C: below the user defined limit."

I have many Gigs of free space and space allocated to SR has been 20%. At present with 8 RPs, SR configurations is showing use of only 6.12 Gigs out of 183 Gigs available... So for some reason System Restore is erroneously registering a lack of space and therefore deleting the least recent RP's -- which happen to be only 2 or 3 days old..

How might I correct this?

eli

Bree · 16 Oct 2018

eliuri said:

At present with 8 RPs, SR configurations is showing use of only 75 Mb... So for some reason System Restore is erroneously registering a lack of space and therefore deleting the least recent RP's ...

Just 75MB for eight restore points sounds far too small. If your System Restore Configuration is reporting only 75MB used, then that would appear to be the erroneous figure here.

I currently have five restore points, the smallest of which is 448MB. The five restore points add up to 2.34GB. You can look at the files for the restore points (they are stored in the System Volume Information folder) using TreeSize Free run as administrator.
TreeSize Free Portable (directory size and usage analyzer) | PortableApps.com

Missing most of my System Restore Points-restore-points.png

eliuri · 16 Oct 2018

My apologies, Bree. I edited my post of a few minutes ago, because that part was in error. There are two different configurations there. One for the Recovery Drive and the other for the OS. The 75Mb I had initially reported was for Recovery Drive Configuration. I then looked at the OS Configuration and I see:

6.13 Gig current usage out of 183 Gig Maximum usage.

183Gig is actually about 20% of my free space. Which is how I now have it set up

Sorry again..

Bree · 16 Oct 2018

eliuri said:

My apologies, Bree. I edited my post of a few minutes ago, because that part was in error...

That's OK, makes more sense now

I then looked at the OS Configuration and I see:
6.13 Gig current usage out of 183 Gig Maximum usage.

183Gig is actually about 20% of my free space. Which is how I now have it set up.

It might still be worth looking in System Volume Information with TreeSize Free to see if something other than restore points is using up the allocation.