Now in process of moving all of one of my EHD's files to another EHD, so as to allow me to format the now FAT32 EHD to NTSC. I checked the drive's hidden folders and I was surprised to find a System Volume Information folder containing restore points. Apparrently this's normal whenever an EHD is online when a restore point is made. Also I noticed the EHD's RP numbering sequences indicates that the EHD's aren't being wiped of older RP's as what seems to be happening to the ones on my pc's partitioned D drive (ie; only RP's less than 3 mos old are listed as available RP's). I mention that as I see the EHD has RP2 2/20/08, RP3 3/21/08 and the rest are RP461 to RP473 (dated from 8/27/07 to 2/12/08). In checking the pc's available system restore points, only 2 RP's are listed (dated as 2/14/08 and 3/21/08), but oddly there's no 2/14/08 RP on the EHD and instead it has one dated 2/20/08, so what's up wth that? Anyway, it seems whenever system restore saves/makes RP's, any EHD (then online) also has a copy of that RP stored on the EHD. Kind of makes sense and as such I'm guessing users should know more about system restore because it looks like depending on how system restore looks for things to restore. I'm guessing that an available restore point might only actually work if all drives that were online for that stored RP are aalso again online, no? Or would/should system restore go ahead and overlook any drive or drives not also online when the RP was created? Either way, I suspect my last viable restore point is 3/21/08 as its listed both on the EHD and in SR's available RP(s), and I suspect that there's a file in system restore that requires corrolations between all drives and RP's, such that restore will only work when all drives are present and the dates match up. Lastly, I'm also a bit concerned that my only hopefully viable existing system restore point could be compromised by my formatting the EHD, even if I cut/paste the system volume information folder back onto the re-formatted EHD. These apparrent idiosyncracies about RP's might well explain why users seem to be losing RP's and/or they're not working, no? Regards and hap-e-trails, Steve Hopper

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr... Frequently Asked Questions Regarding System Restore in Windows XP Every time something is installed, even a Windows Update, Windows System Restore will create a Restore Point. For each new day, a Restore Point is created when your computer sits IDLE for a period of time.

Thanks for replying. Useful stuff there, not MS's usual mumbo jumbo. The FAQ answers support my assumptions as how SR works, but I'm still hopeful someone might shed some light on this EHD thing. So unless someone familiar enough with SR replies, it looks like I'll need to be posting with the MS newsgroups. As I find MS newsgroups slightly difficult to access and even to re-locate replies, I'll post back here if my questions are answered. But thanks anyway for replying. Regards and hap-e-trails, Steve Hopper

Why MSN newsgroup? Did you google? Carefully read THIS article! It explain why it's a bad practice to allow System Restore to monitor EHD but if you must use it for one reason or another, the same article offer possible workaround. In any event I hope you are aware that SR does not backup every files & folders. Oh well it's a different topic. i_Xp/VistaUser

Thanks for the reply. Yes, that already was evident to me. Have no known reasons/needs to restore EHD's. Appreciate the link and tip as I figured at this point, there's good reason to prevent SR from including EHD's from RP's. As for my copying the EHD's sys vol info folder, I discovered cut/pasting resulted in only the one valid RP being pasted in the sys vol info's sub folder(s) while all the other RP's failed to paste. Now all I need to do is figure out if it's possible/feasible to configure SR to use a dedicated EHD so's to avoid the always contorted process of restoring the basic system via back up files. I never worry about losing data as I simply back up doc and media folders on EHD, so for me it just seems easiest (when things go south) that SR is the way to go, except that maybe SR is unable to be re-configured so it retains all RP's (on an EHD), or if so, maybe SR would be even more unreliable w/so many RP's strung together. But still I'd like to try that out or hear from anyone who's done it. Thanks again for the replies. Regards and hap-e-trails, Steve Hopper