Is this possible, if yes, how?
My manual created restore points get deleted at random. Sometimes they will still be available after weeks. Sometimes they just dissapear for reasons unknown to me. The last one dissapeared within 9 days and I'm now trying to figure out when this last restore point got deleted and for what reason. Can you help?
I would imagine it would depend on how much drive space you have allocated to system restore.
What should happen is that when the allocated drive space is full, the oldest restore point will get deleted.
Don't forget also that Windows security updates will very often create a restore point, which can affect the frequency with which restore points get deleted.
System Restore: frequently asked questions
Windows Updates have been disabled for half a year now, restore space is set to 2% (about 10GB). I really don't want to speculate as to what might have caused this to happen. I'd like to know if W7 makes note of "restore point deletion" events and if yes what to look for within the event-viewer.
If Microsoft cannot make Sys restore more robust and if any program could delete restore points this whole restore thing is quite pointless (not secure enough). Windows should at least log restore-point deletion events or oddities. I've searched for the 8198 ID. But none can be found under "application log". Even tried making a restore point then delete it after a few minutes. Still no mention of this event in the logs....
Restore points are stored in a hidden folder named System Volume Information, which is mapped to the root of the C drive.
You say you've allocated 2% of your HDD space for system restore, which is not a lot. I believe the default setting is 15% for Windows 7 (Windows XP is 12%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Restore
If you're not happy using System Restore, have you considered full image backups instead? Many of us use Macrium for this purpose.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
Defragmenting your drive with any other tool than windows builtin defragmenter can result in RPs being deleted.
One more reason may be there . If any third party third party disk clear program is there with auto maintenance mode, it includes the restore points (except the latest one) in its cleaning list. Here is a screenshot from TuneUp Utilities ....
The old backups are actually the old restore points.
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