Can I change automatic system protection "shadow copies" settings?

Useful summary of PITR:


From here:

PITR can be disabled, frequency of PITR point creation can be increased, but cannot be less frequent than once in 24 hours.

It doesn't seem you can change the scheduled time, and I haven't yet seen a way to create one manually e.g. with Powershell, as you can a System Restore point. Without that, you can't create your own scheduled task.

System restore points can not be used to recover user files.

Click to expand...

Test it for yourself.

create a file e.g. test.txt on your desktop

create system restore point

delete test.txt

mount the restore point (shadow copy) or look inside it with shadowcopyview.

easy way is rt click the shadow copy and select "open in windows explorer"

copy out test.txt







if you are running shadowcopyview in pe without explorer an alternative is scroll at the bottom to see the contents

rt click whatever files/folder you want in the bottom panel and select "copy selected files to"



if you haven't got explorerframe set up in your pe, just type the destination for the copied files/folders

SIW2 said:

Test it for yourself.

Click to expand...

Yes you are right, I have found out also. Creating a restore point makes a shadow copy including the user files. When restoring, the shadow copy system however exclusively picks up the system files and ignores the user files. You can effectively verify (and recover all user files) with shadow copy viewer.

This leaves the question what really is the difference between the old restore points and PITR, except that, for restoration, PITR restores also the user files.

what really is the difference between the old restore points and PITR, except that, for restoration, PITR restores also the user files.

Click to expand...

That seems to be it except the pitr shadows are only kept for 72 hours. I havent looked at pitr yet so it is a guess.

As I have posted many times before shadowcopy can be captured into a wim for restore purposes.

for beginners it can be capured into install.wim. Then replace the install.wim in installation media sources folder so setup.exe can do the job

SIW2 said:

That seems to be it except the pitr shadows are only kept for 72 hours. I havent looked at pitr yet so it is a guess.

As I have posted many times before shadowcopy can be captured into a wim for restore purposes.

for beginners it can be capured into install.wim. Then replace the install.wim in installation media sources folder so setup.exe can do the job

Click to expand...

Thanks,
another easy way is Shadow Explorer (easier to use than ShadowCopyView; just copy and paste the file you want to get back from the list) !

shadowexplorer needs netframework so not much in use pe, unless you are going to put all that in your pe which I cba with

shadowcopyview is a more useful tool because it doesnt have those dependencies.

can also be done with 7-zip ui but you need to type in the path so you need to know which shadow you are looking for
e.g \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy5\ then press enter

shadowcopyview lists them for you with dates which makes it easier to identify and opening in windows explorer makes it simpler for beginners

SIW2 said:

shadowexplorer needs netframework so not much in use pe

Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't use PE, except for the Hasleo Bootmenu