Solved Is it possible to have system restore on an external harddrive?

[knk17forever]

Is it possible to have system restore on an external harddrive so it is not taking up space on my C drive?

 

[Brink]

Hello knk17forever,

Sorry, but when you turn on system protection for a HDD, it is also stored on that specific HDD. You cannot have the restore points save on another HDD than the HDD that system protection is turned on for.

 

[knk17forever]

Ok,

What about having system restore turned off and using some other form of copying or backing up my system on an external hard drive... would that be possible?

 

[Brink]

Sure, you could do that, and create system images to use.

I wouldn't recommend to turn off system protection for you Windows 7 drive. Having it on will allow you to be able to do a quick system restore to undo a mistake instead of having to reinstall Windows 7 or do a system image recovery.

For the best protection, I would to use both. This way you can do a system restore for minor issues, and do a system image recovery if a system restore cannot fix Windows 7 instead of having to do a clean install of Windows 7.

 

[GeneO]

I'll bet that with VSSADMIN you can create a new shadow storage on a different volume for C: then limit you size of shadow storage on C. Even if it worked I don't think it would be wise.

 

[Brink]

I'll bet that with VSSADMIN you can create a new shadow storage on a different volume for C: then limit you size of shadow storage on C. Even if it worked I don't think it would be wise.

Hello Gene,

Yeah, you may be able to do so using that command below, but it wouldn't work with a external HDD unless the external HDD was connected via eSATA without any adapters. Plus, it would be best to leave them stored on the same HDD to avoid any potential issues and not being able to use the restore points when needed.

Vssadmin add shadowstorage

 

[GeneO]

I'll bet that with VSSADMIN you can create a new shadow storage on a different volume for C: then limit you size of shadow storage on C. Even if it worked I don't think it would be wise.

Hello Gene,

Yeah, you may be able to do so using that command below, but it wouldn't work with a external HDD unless the external HDD was connected via eSATA without any adapters. Plus, it would be best to leave them stored on the same HDD to avoid any potential issues and not being able to use the restore points when needed.

Vssadmin add shadowstorage

hence my "wouldn't be wise"

 

[Brink]

Yep, was just agreeing with you.