Restore points retension

How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

On 12/21/2017 12:54 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Â*Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

Another question, Where does Windows 10 keep its restore points?
I have looked in system information folderrestore points but nothing there.

Thanks again, Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore

"Maximum space

In Windows XP, System Restore can be configured to use
up to a maximum of 12% of the volume's space for most
disk sizes; however, this may be less depending on the
volume's size.

Restore points over 90 days old are automatically deleted,
as specified by the registry value RPLifeInterval
(default value of 7776000 seconds). In Windows Vista and
later, System Restore is designed for larger volumes.
"

So that gives a hint as to how the policy is designed.
They don't give a table listing each OS.

The time is not infinity. If you purchased a 10TB boot
drive, you would not end up with restore points back to
1953.

AFAIK, Restore Points are incremental. To go back 12 restore
points, means opening 12 files. The probability of this
working successfully, would drop with how far back in
time you were trying to go.

And if for any reason, space is needed, the oldest RP would
be thrown away first. So you cannot depend on them like
some kind of "backup strategy". Consider them to be
volatile - they could be deleted behind your back.

Whereas a full backup to an external drive, is robust
for the time it is unplugged and stored in the corner.
It will be there when you need it. By restoring using a
WinPE-based CD, malware should not be able to get it either,
when you're trying to "recover your computer room" at some
later date. This assumes, of course, that a WinPE disc
"has no bad habits", and I don't know how defensively
a WinPE disc is designed. Like, I hope it won't
be reading any autorun.inf files and doing stuff :-)

Paul

On 12/21/2017 2:05 PM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Â*Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore

Â*Â* "Maximum space

Â*Â*Â* In Windows XP, System Restore can be configured to use
Â*Â*Â* up to a maximum of 12% of the volume's space for most
Â*Â*Â* disk sizes; however, this may be less depending on the
Â*Â*Â* volume's size.

Â*Â*Â* Restore points over 90 days old are automatically deleted,
Â*Â*Â* as specified by the registry value RPLifeInterval
Â*Â*Â* (default value of 7776000 seconds). In Windows Vista and
Â*Â*Â* later, System Restore is designed for larger volumes.
Â*Â* "

So that gives a hint as to how the policy is designed.
They don't give a table listing each OS.

The time is not infinity. If you purchased a 10TB boot
drive, you would not end up with restore points back to
1953.

AFAIK, Restore Points are incremental. To go back 12 restore
points, means opening 12 files. The probability of this
working successfully, would drop with how far back in
time you were trying to go.

And if for any reason, space is needed, the oldest RP would
be thrown away first. So you cannot depend on them like
some kind of "backup strategy". Consider them to be
volatile - they could be deleted behind your back.

Whereas a full backup to an external drive, is robust
for the time it is unplugged and stored in the corner.
It will be there when you need it. By restoring using a
WinPE-based CD, malware should not be able to get it either,
when you're trying to "recover your computer room" at some
later date. This assumes, of course, that a WinPE disc
"has no bad habits", and I don't know how defensively
a WinPE disc is designed. Like, I hope it won't
be reading any autorun.inf files and doing stuff :-)

Â*Â* Paul

I asked mostly out of curiosity, System restore is probably the *last*
thing I would depend on. :-)
Macrium Reflect and an disconnected external drive are my thing.
I had noticed that they dissapear and wondered how long they lasted
before they melted.
I just did 7 manual ones and will watch and see when they dissapear.
Also in a followup post I inquired where they were stored, Some said in
System Information but they don't seem to be there.
Thanks for the reply.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/21/2017 12:54 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

Another question, Where does Windows 10 keep its restore points?
I have looked in system information folderrestore points but nothing
there.

Thanks again, Rene

If I click the System Restore button in the System control panel,
it shows three entries right now.

Date and Time Description Type
12/16/2017 3:39:13 AM Windows Modules Installer Install
12/12/2017 11:50:51 AM Installed Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.1.30 Install
12/11/2017 11:25:24 AM Automatic Restore Point System

There is a five hour time offset, between the times listed below, and
the times in the Control Panel. You can see three of the five shadows in here,
are Restore Points. The remaining two shadows could be artifacts of
my "Windows 7 Backup and friends" experiments, which were also done
on this OS.

ubuntu@ubuntu:/media/ubuntu/WIN10RLS/System Volume Information$ ls -alR
..:
total 3457222
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 4096 Dec 18 11:57 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 8192 Dec 16 08:39 ..
------ 65536 Dec 11 16:25 {3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
------ 196820992 Dec 12 16:50 {0ea2c9ef-de8b-11e7-aa48-40167ea8940e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
------ 2022195200 Dec 16 08:39 {9ce57dbd-df59-11e7-aa4c-40167ea8940e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
-rwxrwxrwx 2 ubuntu ubuntu 415105024 Dec 18 11:57 {ca714440-e23b-11e7-aa5a-40167ea8940e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
-rwxrwxrwx 2 ubuntu ubuntu 905969664 Dec 21 03:24 {7b65fffc-e3e3-11e7-aa5f-40167ea8940e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}
-rwxrwxrwx 2 ubuntu ubuntu 76 Jun 27 2016 IndexerVolumeGuid
-rwxrwxrwx 2 ubuntu ubuntu 0 Jun 27 2016 MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 4096 Dec 16 08:39 SPP
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 0 Dec 16 08:39 SystemRestore
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 20480 Jun 27 2016 tracking.log
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 4 Dec 15 06:39 Wcifs.md
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 0 Feb 27 2017 Windows Backup
drwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu ubuntu 0 Sep 1 2016 WindowsImageBackup
-rwxrwxrwx 2 ubuntu ubuntu 12 Jun 27 2016 WPSettings.dat

If I use "nfi.exe" from Win2K days, the utility that
lists the contents of an NTFS volume, it admits to the
existence of "SPP" directory, but not to the existence
of the shadows. Anything with Access Denied cannot
be listed. So if you wanted to do such experiments
solely from Windows, it's hard.

Note how those restore points are entirely different
to the WinXP method. WinXP doesn't have persistent shadows
(to my knowledge), and instead has things like "RP123.exe".

I can't tell you right off hand, what Windows 10 is backing
up there. I also don't dare open those files. If you do open
them, they are "filled with zeros". They could be a pointer
scheme, but I don't know the mechanics at all. Those files, in
some way, could be pointing at (disconnected) clusters located
elsewhere. And when you probe directly, you're rewarded
with... zeros. There must be some sort of indirection scheme
that gives the information.

And this is unlike the RP123.exe method, as I could probably
open those with 7ZIP and have a look :-) Maybe I could pull
copies of valid registry files out of an RP123.exe file.
What can I pull out of a shadow ? Zeros.

Paul

On 12/21/2017 12:54 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Â*Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene
For me W10 deletes all restore points after every major upgrade and
constantly turns off the creation of restore points after major
upgrades. It's almost like Microsoft would rather have windows crash
and burn so a fresh install is needed to flush out any built up errors
that they have caused with routine updates or just plain bad
programming, but then I tend to be a little cynical with regards to what
Microsoft does.

On older versions of the OS the restore points tended to remain on the
hard drive until newer versions ran out of free hard drive space, then
the oldest would get over-written by the newest version.

On 12/21/17 3:52 PM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:
On 12/21/2017 12:54 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene
For me W10 deletes all restore points after every major upgrade and
constantly turns off the creation of restore points after major
upgrades. It's almost like Microsoft would rather have windows crash
and burn so a fresh install is needed to flush out any built up errors
that they have caused with routine updates or just plain bad
programming, but then I tend to be a little cynical with regards to what
Microsoft does.

On older versions of the OS the restore points tended to remain on the
hard drive until newer versions ran out of free hard drive space, then
the oldest would get over-written by the newest version.

What I've noticed, from fresh reinstalls from the ground up, is W10 will
turn System Restore on, but not alot any space for the restore points.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.11.6
Firefox 53.0.2 (64 bit)
Thunderbird 52.0
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On Thu, 21 Dec 2017 12:54:39 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

How long Does Widows 10 retain restore points?
Given there is ample room allotted.
Searching the net gives various answers.

Thanks to all, Rene

They seem to get deleted when they are no longer useable eg if you
upgraded to a later build some time after creating a RP. Maybe part
of the upgrade process deletes all previous RPs.