Why do people not have any System Restore points

karlsnooks said:

Just create a system restore point (which is different than a system image).

Now restore using that system restore point.

You will find that restore time is considerably less.

Not necessarily... And honestly, I've never had to use System Restore on my Windows 7 machine. Vista was another story.

I know the difference between the two

karlsnooks said:

which is different than a system image

I've restored an image in Windows 7 when swapping out a different SSD and booting to Acronis boot disk, finding image on external hdd and restoring a 15GB image only takes 7 minutes.

Windows System Restore requires a reboot and will after that reboot, will take anywhere from less-than-a-minute up to about 4 to 5 -- but, again, that was with my Vista system. I have no knowledge of how Windows System Restore is with Windows 7.

Anecdote time....
I had a boss that had a PC that was updated to XP SP3 and it wouldn't start. The update also corrupted all of the system restore points when we tried to load up with a system restore. I was lucky to get it going after about 10 attempts and backed up all his info. Then worked on restoring his system which took finding a fix on MS's site and booting from CD.

Since then I have trusted System Restore only that much. Have it so its there, but also back up all data always to an external drive. Its the only way to be sure its secure.

I never run System Restore because it's not needed. It wastes space and system resources. I can restore an image with Macrium Reflect in about 10 minutes so System Restore becomes redundant redundancy. Not only that but I can't count the times it has failed while trying to restore someones system for them.

I would like to say that this is my preference and it may work for some but I would not rely in it solely. I would still perform all scheduled backups.

whs said:

It will require a whole long campaign to educate people about the merits of proper preperations for worst case. And that includes

Seperate data partition
Restore point
System imaging
Data backup

I am always stunned how little people know about those concepts let alone using them. But usually they learn the hard way - after a reinstallation and loss of their data.

Seperate data partition = check
Restore points = nope
System imaging = check......this is my system restore
Data backup = check

3 outta 4 ain't bad