Is it a bad practise to do system restore often?

Question

I have done system restore 10-15 times thus far within 5-6 months.....

Is it a bad practise to do system restore often?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if it has any complications ( i don't really think so) but if you need to do it that often, why not look into virtualisation with, for example VmWare. You can do whatever you want, and keep returning to the original install.

It will never break and probably a lot faster without messing your current Operating System

Answer 2

Whenever Windows decides to restore a file or directory from a restore point, it will rename the existing file/directory and append "(number)" to its name. Windows keeps data that way, rather than overwriting it.

So every time you do a restore, you accumulate garbage in sensitive system directories, that do require lots of care and knowledge when doing deletes.

Conclusion: System restore is a bad practice, to be done only in case of emergency.
Taking disk image snapshots is preferable.

You should also modify your habits to avoid the need for system restore.
If you're in the habit of installing dubious products, you might prefer a product such as sandboxie, or using a virtual machine as a disposable test platform.

Answer 3

It's not a bad practice, providing you don't lose anything from your PC when you do it.

I would only question why you need to.