[adifrank]

Hi. I have question concerning Windows XP System Restore Utility and its settings.

I have three hard drives:
C: which is a dedicated system drive (only Windows and installed programs)
E: personal documents
M: archived media files (video, photos, music)

I've noticed that in System Restore settings you can select which drives to enable it.
Currently I see it is enabled for all three hard drives (C, E and M). Shouldn't it be enabled ONLY to drive C - my system drive? After all... it is a SYSTEM restore utility, not a complete back-up program for all my personal data...
I remember some weeks ago, due to some strange things going on in my computer, that I used system restore to bring my system back to how it was a few days before. The restore was successful, but then I noticed that a couple of files that I had created in the recent days had disappeared! This got me thinking that maybe my computer was under some kind of malicious attack. But now, seeing how my System Restore utility is set up... I'm thinking maybe it has to do with having drives E and M enabled.

Am I right?
Should I only have C enabled?

And what if I have only one hard drive but with two partitions (as is the case with my laptop), should I have System Restore enabled ONLY on the partition dedicated to the system?

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Hello adifrank -

Shouldn't it be enabled ONLY to drive C - I have three hard drives:

If you only want to be able to restore C drive then you can uncheck the other drives.
You have System Restore set to restore each separate drive you have enabled.
If you uncheck the others how would you restore them if you had a problem ? ?
If you detach one of the drives the option to restore it should then be gone.

The restore was successful, but then I noticed that a couple of files that I had created in the recent days had disappeared!

Do you know what drives these files disappeared from ? Was it C drive or one of the others ? ?

[noknojon]

Hello adifrank -

Shouldn't it be enabled ONLY to drive C - I have three hard drives:

If you only want to be able to restore C drive then you can uncheck the other drives.
You have System Restore set to restore each separate drive you have enabled.
If you uncheck the others how would you restore them if you had a problem ? ?
If you detach one of the drives the option to restore it should then be gone.

The restore was successful, but then I noticed that a couple of files that I had created in the recent days had disappeared!

Do you know what drives these files disappeared from ? Was it C drive or one of the others ? ?

[adifrank]

hey noknojon... thanks for replying.

If you uncheck the others how would you restore them if you had a problem ? ?

I have a portable hard drive I use to backup all my personal data on drives E and M. But isn't the Windows XP System Restore Utility only for backing up system files? Are you saying that it might be vital for restoring drives that store only personal files as well?

Do you know what drives these files disappeared from ? Was it C drive or one of the others ? ?

Any changes to my C drive were expected, because I was attempting to restore my system.... and my C drive IS my system drive.
But my E and M drives only store personal data. The files I noticed which had been changed or removed were from those two drives. I'm not sure exactly how System Restore Utility works, but I don't expect it to backup all my data. How can it? Both drives together contain about 1TB of data.