Windows 8 System Protection

Windows 8’s System Protection is a feature that creates a backup and saves the conﬁguration information of your computer’s system ﬁles and settings on a regular basis. Rather than overwriting them, System Protection saves previous versions of saved configurations in your Windows 8 history, making it possible to return to multiple configurations, known as restore points. Restore points are created before major events, such as the installation of a new driver. Restore points are also created every seven days automatically.

By default in Windows 8, System Protection is turned on for any NTFS-formatted drive. System Protection and restore points are managed on the System Properties dialog box from the System Protection tab. Directly access this tab by typing in restore point in the Start menu’s search box. Click the System Restore button to prompt the System Restore wizard, which will take you through the process of returning Windows 8 to a previous point in time.

Also on the System Protection tab is the Protection Settings section, where you can conﬁgure any of your available drives. Select the drive that you would like to change the conﬁguration and click Conﬁgure button. This prompts the System Protection conﬁguration dialog box for the drive. You can enable or disable system protection for the drive through the System Protection for the selected disk properties box. When protection is enabled, you can choose for previous versions for ﬁles or previous versions of ﬁles and system settings.

You can also set the maximum usage your restore points will use for storage. You can also click the Delete button and this will delete all restore points including system setting and previous versions of ﬁles for the selected disk from the System Protection dialog box.