I frequently use a portable USB drive, just a 256MB stick, at university. Most of the computers use Windows XP. Whenever I use my USB drive, Windows likes to set a system restore point on the drive. Is there any way to prevent this from happening, short of going around to every computer and disabling system restore? It's not the most pleasant to have to wait for Windows to set a point or risk corrupting data... Putting an instructions file on the drive, perhaps? (In the style of robots.txt) Any help is appreciated!

Right click on My Computer, select Properties. Click on System Restore tab. Click on the USB drive and place checkmark Turn off System Restore on this drive. i_XpUser

I've tried that...many times. Each time the drive is removed and replaced, it activates system restore again. And, of course, the same when moving to a different computer. I don't think there are any MS-sanctioned methods to accomplish what I need, just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and figured out a hack :\

I think there must be some type of settings on your PC that causes this problem. On my end, SR never has been a problem as I often plugged in and plugged out all kinds of USB devices (sticks, external HDs, you name it) i_XpUser

"I think there must be some type of settings on your PC that causes this problem." I thought that when I first saw it, on my home PC. But it seems to happen universally. I've also noticed that my other stick (64MB) doesn't get system-restored, perhaps there's a size limit? I was hoping there was some way to tell Windows to just "leave me alone!" without altering every PC I encounter. The problem with just turning it off comes with the fact that our accounts are of the "limited" type, and can't disable SR :( Just gotta wait for it to set a point then.

Try formatting the usb pen drive. Maybe there is something on the drive that tells windows to do this and formatting will erase it.

I've also done that a few times, and tried changing format between FAT/FAT32/NTFS.