System Restore and Personal Data Query

Hi

I'm getting just a little confused regarding System Restore and just what goes into Restore Points. I have some 6.5Tb of disc space 18 partitions, most of which contains only personal data, i.e. no system files or installed programs of ANY kind.

Up to now all partitions have been enabled for System Restore and taking a Restore Point seems to take ages. Whilst checking this out I noticed that although System Restore is not supposed to do anything with personal data, on most partitions which contain ONLY personal data, System Restore is still using over 2Gb of space (not the space available but actually in use!). Exactly what does System Restore put in its Restore Points? I know it includes system files, registry settings - and installed programs but...what are these installed programs - windows programs or programs such as word processors, dtp, photo editing etc?

I'm just puzzled as to what W7 may be putting in Restore Points on partitions which have no system files and no installed programs of ANY description. What am I likely to lose (if anything) if I disable System Restore on these partitions? I'd already disabled System Restore on five partitions when I noticed this and I STILL have a total of some 17Gb of space taken up by Restore Points.

I should also add that I have done a search of these forums but so far have found nothing relating to my problem. I hope all this makes sense but I've not found it easy to explain. Sorry for any confusion but I do hope you can make sense of my query.

Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Tracey

Thanks very much for your response.

My real concern was regarding System Restore as I was completely uncertain as to what was placed in a Restore Point. I presumably (from what you say) that no-one should need to do a System Restore on anything other than their Windows partition whatever that may be (in my case D: (Win7) - WinXP is on C:). As I said in my initial post, I started disabling System Restore on my drives but stopped when I realised just how much data was in the Restore Points leaving me wondering why, how, and what, it was storing on partitions with no system files. I have now disabled all drives from creating Restore Points apart from D:.

You also mentioned System Image and although I believed I knew what you were talking about, I looked into it anyway only to find out that it WAS something I do every Saturday using TrueImage Home 2010. Nevertheless, I've also used the Windows facility as well so I'm doubly protected at present.

Again thanks very much for your input and I think for the moment I'm all sorted. Thanks very much.

Tracey