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Acronis 2018 and Win 10 Restore point

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I just loaded Acronis 2018 and did a full backup on my Windows 10 Home 64-bit computer.   I had 2 restore points before the backup but now all restore points are gone.  

Does anyone have a way to get the restore points back?  I needed to go back to a point in time and just wanted a backup in case anything went wrong.  Looks like that was a mistake.

 

Thanks

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Mike, under System Protection what's the maximum allowable drive space? It sounds like you may have a very small amount allocated. Your backup is using VSS which shares the space with restore points. If need be, it will delete old restore points to gain space. Once gone, they are gone.

I think I have enough.  It is 10 GB.  

Both restore points were in place just before I installed TI 2018.  I double checked before I started the install of TI

 

I also did a Rescue Media Builder in the Tools section after the backup completed which might be the more likely cause. 

If TI 2018 removes my restore points at each backup, that would not be a good solution for me.

10GB is a rather small amount. I use 15% of my 500GB drive (about 70GB) as a maximum.

I don't think building the Rescue Media would have had any effect on your restore points.

On your backup task, go to the Advanced tab and way down at the bottom under Performance, you can change the way ATI will do snapshots. The default for a disk backup is VSS and for file and folder backups it is VSS without writers. You can change it to Acronis Snapshot and it won't use the Windows interface (thus not competing for space with restore points). That's how I do my system drive backup. I also boot the Rescue Media periodically to do a full system drive backup outside of Windows 10, particularly after a Windows update and/or significant program install.

Perhaps and MVP can weigh in here about any potential risks in doing a system disk backup using Acronis snapshot instead of VSS.

Thanks for the response BrunoC.  

So you are thinking if it runs out of space for restore points it will delete all previous restore points?  I have not had one disappear when it is that recent but I have not been keeping a careful eye out for when it deletes all points.

This was a new machine with not much loaded so I am guessing  I did not overload it but when I get things back and running again, will do some tests.  

Just really puts me back a ways to lose both  those restore points.  One new one has been created since my reboot.

 

 

Mike, check in the default Exclusions settings for your backup task as Acronis excludes the System Volume Information folders by default, and this is where any Restore Point data is stored, hence it is not included in the backup image if using the default settings.

Windows 10 disables creation of System Restore points by default too - see webpage: How to Enable System Restore (and Repair System Problems) on Windows 10

Thanks for the response Steve.  Looks like I can't get back to them.

I definitely had System Restore turned on because I had two restore points created.  One on  Saturday and one on Sunday. 

 

 

Mike, I accept that you had System Restore turned on but if your backup task Exclusions page looks similar to mine below, then this data is not included as is stored in the System Volume Information folder!  You would need to remove that line from the exclusions.

2017-11-06 21_22_34.png

Hi Steve

Yes, I understood.  It was excluded that is why I said "Looks like I can't get back to them".

I will make those changes going forward.

Thanks again

 

 

Hi Steve, system restore is on, and system volume is not in my exclusions list.  Yet when I restored a system image yesterday, I found I had no restore points.  Any idea what is going on?  I saw this thread a few months ago and figured the noted instructions would do the trick, but unfortunately no.  I am using TI 2018.

Paul, when you did the restore of your system image, did you keep the log file for this before restarting the computer after the restore was complete?

Further, have you checked that the System Volume Information folders were included in the .tib file (with hidden/system files / folders enabled for viewing in Explorer)?

To be honest, I am not sure whether it would be Acronis not restoring these folders (for restore points) or whether it would be Windows removing them either when the backup is made or on restore?

It may be that the only 'guaranteed?' way of saving and restoring these system folders is by using a Sector-by-Sector backup & recovery approach (where zero exclusions are applied).

The Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) can also get involved in backups and is known to want to exclude some types of data due to its own default settings in the Windows registry!

On a personal note, I have never needed to try to recover a backup with system restore point information included as hopefully, the backup being restored was captured at a time when all was working correctly, so not needing to restore back to an earlier point in time via the restore point method.

Thanks Steve,

I did not save any log prior to restart.

I can confirm the System Volume folder was include in the tib (I can navigate through it).  Within that System Volume folder are several folders, one of which is System Restore.  However the only folder within that is called FR Staging.  Within that folder there is nothing.  Hmmm?

The reason for wanting the restore points is that (in my case) going back to older images did not fix a windows problem I was investigating.  At the end I wanted to go back to my most recent (current) image, as opposed to an older one.  In that case it would be nice to have the restore points.

Paul

Paul, I think that your system restore data has been excluded as described in the webpage below:

Excluding Files from Shadow Copies

If I look at the registry key referenced in the above webpage:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot - I see a range of System Volume Information folder exclusions which are set in Windows without any action by myself!

2018-09-14 16_55_19 VSS registry 1.png2018-09-14 16_55_19 VSS registry 2.png

 

Thanks again Steve,

 

So the upshot of all of this is that I really can't ensure that restore points are included - correct?

 

Paul

So the upshot of all of this is that I really can't ensure that restore points are included - correct?

All the previous comments related to the use of the Microsoft VSS service when creating snapshot data.  In the Advanced options for your backup task, you can choose a different snapshot method from the choices offered, or you can create a full backup using the Acronis Rescue Media which does not use snapshot at all!