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Why do my restore points keep vanishing?


I have just done a clean install of W10 64 bit and as I loaded drivers for old printers and my soundcard I created restore points for the c: drive so if I had issues I could unwind. Now I discover they are all gone! Even one I did earlier today. The deleting of my restore points seem to happen when I do a re-boot or when there is an update - but why? What is the point of having a restore point if it keeps vanishing?

Dear Joddle:
Windows manages space for restore points and one odd pathology that can occur when the "space ceiling" is set to a low value is that restore points vanish soon after being captured. To check your settings, type "restore point" into the Start menu, then click on "Create a restore point." This opens the System Properties window with the System Protection tab at the forefront:

Find your boot/system drive in the list (usually C:) then click the Configure button:

As you can see, I've got only 2% of my drive space allocated for a total of 10 GB. Of that available amount, 8.15 GB is already in use. This almost certainly means that the next time I make a restore point, an older one will be "sacrificed" to make room for it. Hopefully, this also shows you that you can raise the ceiling on the storage allocation (by moving the slider to the right) to make more room for your restore points. Tip: if you highlight the slider "cursor" with your mouse, you can then click the right arrow key to raise the allocation by 1% increments. This helps with really fine adjustments. Thus, I just raised my allocation to 5% seeing that 2% is pretty small (I've got a bigger system/boot drive than I'm used to, with lots of free space).
I hope this fixes your problems. If not, report back here on what you find and we'll help you get it sorted out.

I think I have set enough space but my restore points are all missing!

I have just done a clean install of W10 64 bit and as I loaded drivers for old printers and my soundcard I created restore points for the c: drive so if I had issues I could unwind. Now I discover they are all gone! Even one I did earlier today. The deleting of my restore points seem to happen when I do a re-boot or when there is an update - but why? What is the point of having a restore point if it keeps vanishing?
By any chance you are dual booting ?
If so, what OSes are on dual boot ?

Dear Joddle:
That is odd, given you've got a big chunk of disk real estate set aside. Let me do some more digging and see if I can come up with something. There's a good third-party tool out there I want to find for managing restore points, and maybe some additional intelligence to be found. I'll report back after I have a chance to do some research. I'm on "weekend honeydew patrol" so it may be awhile before I can report back...

Hi - no dual boot - on this machine - only W10 64bit - there are two physical drives laid out as four partitions.

Restore points vanish for a variety of reasons. If you want to keep the system status at certain points in time, make images.


Check outSystem Restore Explorer. Right after you make one, you can use this to mount that restore point, then make a copy to another drive for safekeeping. I'll keep investigating: I'm just getting started. The other comment about a system image is good advice, too, though.

Check outSystem Restore Explorer. Right after you make one, you can use this to mount that restore point, then make a copy to another drive for safekeeping. I'll keep investigating: I'm just getting started. The other comment about a system image is good advice, too, though.
Just had a read of the thread with that link - very interesting and make me wonder if the problem I have is due to the way the HDDs are configured.

I think my system boots from the second HDD rather than the first -(don't know why that happened but when I was doing the re-install I noticed that the old c drive was not at the top of the list and I had to select the partition to do the install - must be the way the sata cables are plugged in I suppose.

Shoot, Joddle: this is Windows. Almost anything can happen, and sometimes does. That's why I thought the afore-linked System Restore Explorer might find your Restore Points for you, especially if they're going someplace unexpected. I still haven't had time to do further research though: just checking in between errands at the moment.

Why do my restore points keep vanishing?