Do you back up System Volume Information?

glee wrote:
"mm" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 01:39:59 -0400, "glee"
wrote:

What are you talking about? This is a win98 group, your talking about
a win98 partition....there is no system restore in win98. If you have a
dual-boot system with 98 and XP, then from XP go turn off system
restore
for the 98 partition...there's no reason to have it on except for the
XP partition. The SVI folder tree is created by XP's system restore
utility....there is no reason to have SR turned on for the win98
partition.

You're right. I was very confused. By the time I noticed Restore
files in the 98 partition, I'd forgotten that they weren't there when
I used only 98. (In fact it took me months to notice there were
Restore files in XP, let alone 98. I will turn off Restore as soon as
I get back to XP.

Thanks and sorry for the confusion to you and Bill.
Sorr

Don't turn SR off completely in XP, just turn it off for the non-XP
partitions. System control panel (WinKey+Pause/Break) System Restore
tab, select the drive where you want to turn SR off, click the Settings
button, put a check in the box for "Turn off System Restore on this
drive", click OK all the way out.

For the partition(s) you are still monitoring (leaving it on), select
that partition, click Settings, and move the slider for "Disk space to
use" for SR down till it uses only about 1000 to 1200 MB, then click OK
all the way out.

But that's pretty minimal, though. I'd reserve 2 GB, with any decent size
HD. Keep in mind each restore point nominally takes about 50-100 GB, so
with only 1 GB set aside, he'd potentially only have room for about 10
restore points. That's not even 2 weeks worth.

"Bill in Co" wrote in message
...
glee wrote:
"mm" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 01:39:59 -0400, "glee"
wrote:

What are you talking about? This is a win98 group, your talking
about
a win98 partition....there is no system restore in win98. If you
have a
dual-boot system with 98 and XP, then from XP go turn off system
restore
for the 98 partition...there's no reason to have it on except for
the
XP partition. The SVI folder tree is created by XP's system
restore
utility....there is no reason to have SR turned on for the win98
partition.

You're right. I was very confused. By the time I noticed Restore
files in the 98 partition, I'd forgotten that they weren't there
when
I used only 98. (In fact it took me months to notice there were
Restore files in XP, let alone 98. I will turn off Restore as soon
as
I get back to XP.

Thanks and sorry for the confusion to you and Bill.
Sorr

Don't turn SR off completely in XP, just turn it off for the non-XP
partitions. System control panel (WinKey+Pause/Break) System
Restore
tab, select the drive where you want to turn SR off, click the
Settings
button, put a check in the box for "Turn off System Restore on this
drive", click OK all the way out.

For the partition(s) you are still monitoring (leaving it on), select
that partition, click Settings, and move the slider for "Disk space
to
use" for SR down till it uses only about 1000 to 1200 MB, then click
OK
all the way out.

But that's pretty minimal, though. I'd reserve 2 GB, with any decent
size HD. Keep in mind each restore point nominally takes about 50-100
GB, so with only 1 GB set aside, he'd potentially only have room for
about 10 restore points. That's not even 2 weeks worth.

No, it's not minimal at all. You shouldn't use restore points more than
two weeks old anyway, and you will get 2 weeks worth with 1GB to 1.2GB
set for SR use. It will give you 12 to 15 points easily. Giving SR too
much disk space (the default is 12% of the partition, which is way too
much on modern large drives) can lead to corruption of the restore
points.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html#Adjust

Bert Kinney and others did extensive testing of this, and settled on
just over 1GB as the optimal amount of space to reserve. A little
higher won't hurt, but there is no good reason to use anything over 2GB,
and less is more than sufficient.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 10:27:45 -0400, "glee"
wrote:

"mm" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 01:39:59 -0400, "glee"
wrote:

What are you talking about? This is a win98 group, your talking about
a
win98 partition....there is no system restore in win98. If you have a
dual-boot system with 98 and XP, then from XP go turn off system
restore
for the 98 partition...there's no reason to have it on except for the
XP
partition. The SVI folder tree is created by XP's system restore
utility....there is no reason to have SR turned on for the win98
partition.

You're right. I was very confused. By the time I noticed Restore
files in the 98 partition, I'd forgotten that they weren't there when
I used only 98. (In fact it took me months to notice there were
Restore files in XP, let alone 98. I will turn off Restore as soon as
I get back to XP.

Thanks and sorry for the confusion to you and Bill.
Sorr

Don't turn SR off completely in XP, just turn it off for the non-XP
partitions.

Okay. What about backups and images of the XP partition?

I turned off SR for those too, but will turn them back on if I made a
mistake.

System control panel (WinKey+Pause/Break) System Restore
tab, select the drive where you want to turn SR off, click the Settings
button, put a check in the box for "Turn off System Restore on this
drive", click OK all the way out.

Got it.

For the partition(s) you are still monitoring (leaving it on), select
that partition, click Settings, and move the slider for "Disk space to
use" for SR down till it uses only about 1000 to 1200 MB, then click OK
all the way out.

Okay.

How to Adjust the amount of disk space System Restore uses to hold
restore points (XP):
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/diskspace.html

Reading that now.

Thanks a lot.

"mm" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 10:27:45 -0400, "glee"
wrote:
snip
Don't turn SR off completely in XP, just turn it off for the non-XP
partitions.

Okay. What about backups and images of the XP partition?

I turned off SR for those too, but will turn them back on if I made a
mistake.
snip

The only partition XP's SR needs to monitor is the one XP is installed
on. If you have more than one partition with XP active system files on
it, then monitor them. Usually the system and boot partitions are the
same , but sometimes they are separate in dual-boot scenarios. If 98
was installed first then XP was installed in dual-boot _using XP's
built-in boot manger/boot menu_, then the XP boot files (ntldr and so
forth) will be on the 98 partition, and you should probably monitor it
with SR (although you can get away with not, if you maintain a separate
backup of the boot files).

As for partitions with backups and images, no, definitely not.....do NOT
include them in System Restore. BTW, I hope those images and backups
are on a separate physical drive and not just a partition on the same
drive as the OS, or a hard drive failure will lose your images and
backups as well.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

In message , mm
writes:
[]
I have ERUNT running, but haven't figured out yet what it does. :-)


You don't "have it running".

What it does: ERD/ERU = emergency recovery diskette/utility. Came with
Windows 95. It backed up about a dozen files, including the registry.
The name suggests you can back up onto a floppy - that's just about
possible with a new '98 system, but it won't fit on a floppy not long
after you've actually started using the system.

I don't think ERU came with '98, but the '95 version works well with
'98: it's got me out of trouble more than once. '98 has its own
automatic backup/restore system, but it only keeps about ten, deleting
the oldest to store the newest; it's easy to not know things are awry
until after all of the ten are corrupted. ERU has the advantage that you
can specify where it saves the files, and they are kept forever. (It
also creates a DOS-usable utility to do the restoring; if W9x won't even
start, booting from a floppy, going to the directory you've put the
backup in, and running the utility can usually bring things back.)

ERUNT is something a third party has written for NT-based systems - NT,
XP, and Vista (and probably 7). You still have to run it to make the
backups; also, since you can't floppy-boot NTFS-based systems, you need
some way (Linux, Bart-PE, etc.) of booting to get at the restore
utility, if Windows won't boot. (ERUNT's author recommended Bart-PE to
me. Or, you can run your XP on a FAT-formatted system.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

In message , Bill in Co
writes:
[]
Wait a minute, I'm getting confused here, I thought we were talking about
Windows XP. As Glen says, this doesn't apply to Windows 98. As Glen
mentioned, there is no "System Restore" for Win98. About the only
"built-in" restore like fallback you have in Win98 is to use "scanreg
/restore", to restore an older backup of the registry (which is similar to
what ERUNT does for Windows XP)
[]
ERUNT is useful for Windows XP, but is not really necessary for Win98 since
Win98 normally makes its own registry backups each day (assuming you turn
your computer off each night) And you can later restore some of them with
"scanreg /restore" (at the DOS level), if needbe. If you need more backups
you can modify the appropriate ini file, or just save the older backups in
another directory for safe keeping, since only 5 are normally retained.


As Glen has said, '98 does have its auto backup/restore system, though
it's flawed in that it's not under much user control.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , mm
writes:
[]
I have ERUNT running, but haven't figured out yet what it does. :-)


You don't "have it running".

....but it does have an autobackup utility that can be set up during
installation to run at every startup to back up the system registry and
the currently logged on user registry.


snip
ERUNT is something a third party has written for NT-based systems -
NT, XP, and Vista (and probably 7). You still have to run it to make
the backups; also, since you can't floppy-boot NTFS-based systems, you
need some way (Linux, Bart-PE, etc.) of booting to get at the restore
utility, if Windows won't boot. (ERUNT's author recommended Bart-PE to
me. Or, you can run your XP on a FAT-formatted system.)

You don't need any Linux or BART boot CD, all you need is XP Recovery
Console. If you leave ERUNT to its defaults when you install, the
backups are made to the ERDNT sub-folder of the Windows folder, and can
be accessed from Recovery Console. You can enter Recovery Console by
booting from the Windows XP CD or you can install Recovery Console as a
boot option on the hard drive.
--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

In message , glee
writes:
[ERUNT]
...but it does have an autobackup utility that can be set up during
installation to run at every startup to back up the system registry and
the currently logged on user registry.

Ah, I'd forgotten about that.

snip
ERUNT is something a third party has written for NT-based systems -
NT, XP, and Vista (and probably 7). You still have to run it to make
the backups; also, since you can't floppy-boot NTFS-based systems, you
need some way (Linux, Bart-PE, etc.) of booting to get at the restore
utility, if Windows won't boot. (ERUNT's author recommended Bart-PE to
me. Or, you can run your XP on a FAT-formatted system.)

You don't need any Linux or BART boot CD, all you need is XP Recovery
Console. If you leave ERUNT to its defaults when you install, the
backups are made to the ERDNT sub-folder of the Windows folder, and can
be accessed from Recovery Console. You can enter Recovery Console by
booting from the Windows XP CD or you can install Recovery Console as a
boot option on the hard drive.

True (assuming you _have_ an XP CD or have installed the hard drive
option). It's just that I've found the recovery console (I Refuse To
Write Everything With Leading Capitals Just Because Microsoft Do)
extremely non-intuitive to use (and don't have an optical drive on this
netbook). But yes, if the recovery console can get you to a DOS-like
point where you can still access NTFS files, then it should be able to
run ERUNT's recovery utility, without any Linux or BART.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , glee
writes:

snip
ERUNT is something a third party has written for NT-based systems -
NT, XP, and Vista (and probably 7). You still have to run it to make
the backups; also, since you can't floppy-boot NTFS-based systems,
you need some way (Linux, Bart-PE, etc.) of booting to get at the
restore utility, if Windows won't boot. (ERUNT's author recommended
Bart-PE to me. Or, you can run your XP on a FAT-formatted system.)

You don't need any Linux or BART boot CD, all you need is XP Recovery
Console. If you leave ERUNT to its defaults when you install, the
backups are made to the ERDNT sub-folder of the Windows folder, and
can be accessed from Recovery Console. You can enter Recovery Console
by booting from the Windows XP CD or you can install Recovery Console
as a boot option on the hard drive.

True (assuming you _have_ an XP CD or have installed the hard drive
option). It's just that I've found the recovery console (I Refuse To
Write Everything With Leading Capitals Just Because Microsoft Do)
extremely non-intuitive to use (and don't have an optical drive on
this netbook). But yes, if the recovery console can get you to a
DOS-like point where you can still access NTFS files, then it should
be able to run ERUNT's recovery utility, without any Linux or BART.

You don't need an XP CD to use Recovery Console. There are easily
searchable downloads available (dare I say countless?) of ISO files to
burn a Recovery Console CD. If you prefer to install RC to the hard
drive (as in the case of the netbook with no optical drive), you can
follow these instructions to do so, using ComboFix and the appropriate
setup disk download from MS:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/comb...anual_recovery

Just say No (cancel) when completed, to cancel the ComboFix scan of the
computer.

As for RC being non-intuitive, it is no more so non-intuitive than
booting to DOS....again you just have to familiarize yourself with the
new tools....no different than familiarizing yourself with the new tools
available when upgrading to DOS5 or DOS6 from earlier versions.

If you want access to all folders and files through RC, before you need
it, use gpedit in XP Pro to Allow Access, then when booted to RC, use
the command to "Allow All Paths" (space required on either side of the
"=" sign):
http://www.petri.co.il/recovery_cons...partitions.htm

If you have XP Home and no gpedit, manually edit the Registry at this
key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Setup\RecoveryConsole
to add 2 DWORD values and set them both to 1 :
SecurityLevel
SetCommand

RC commands are described he
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/r_c_cmds.htm

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

In message , glee
writes:
[]
You don't need an XP CD to use Recovery Console. There are easily
searchable downloads available (dare I say countless?) of ISO files to
burn a Recovery Console CD. If you prefer to install RC to the hard
drive (as in the case of the netbook with no optical drive), you can
follow these instructions to do so, using ComboFix and the appropriate
setup disk download from MS:
[]
Much useful information, marked as keep, thanks. (Since I _have_
installed Bart_PE on this netbook, *and verified that I can use it!*
[which many people who enthuse about this or that backup/recovery system
seem to omit!], I won't bother, but the information could be useful if
I'm trying to sort someone else out.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

It was kind of Wagnerian in that it was totally for blokes, but it didn't have
difficult woodwind passages. Stuart Maconie (on "Tommy") in Radio Times, 14-20
November 2009.