I'm about to invest in an external USB drive for the short term backup of photos, vids, music etc. I seem to recall reading somewhere that such drives can occasionally interfere with the functioning of system restore and as such it may be best to disable monitoring of the additional drive. Is there any truth in this - or can I relax. Thanks advance for any guidance.

I am not aware of what you read about, but it is arguably redundant to enable system restore on a non-system drive or partition that is used exclusively for data storage or backup. I suggest you disable system restore on every drive with the exception of your system drive. Jabbering Idiots: Everywhere You Look!

If THIS is what you have read, heed it. Another thing you shouldn't do is disconnect the USB without first invoking Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray notification area. i_Xp/VistaUser

I suggest you disable system restore on every drive with the exception of your system drive. That is very true because Windows System Restore cares only about files essential to the operating system. It doesn't care about everything else. i_Xp/VistaUser

And it's only a handful of the many essential system files that it backs up.

Actually the "handful of files" monitored by System Restore is quite a lot. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib... i_Xp/VistaUser

Many thanks for all the quick response on this - relieved that, for once, my recollections on this matter were indeed correct. Yes, XpUser - that's the very same article. Also seem to recall you and/or others assisting on another post a while back where someone had run into real problems when simply switching off a USB drive without first invoking Safely Remove Hardware. As a footnote may I say that despite being in my senior years now, I learn more every day from the superb contributions and advice offered on this site. A real life and sanity saver at times - and damned interesting as well. Thanks.