Archive a restore point permanently?

Restore points are saved as Volume Shadow Copies. They can be mounted and backed up. Start a command shell with admin rights. Then typing

vssadmin list shadows

will give a list of available shadow copies. Pleas note that the list will be empty if the system is not set up to make restore points.

Pick the one you want and mount like so:

mklink /d <mount point> <shadow copy volume>

Actual example:

mklink /d c:\shadow_copy1 \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1\

Copy any files, or the whole shadow copy. Remove when finished:

rd c:\shadow_copy1

[EDIT] It seems you can create disk images from Volume Shadow Copies, though I haven't tried this yet: http://windowsir.blogspot.com/2009/11/working-with-volume-shadow-copies.html

Good question. I've never heard of such a feature, but similar is to image your drive. I'd recommend Driveimage-xml or clonezilla to make a complete back up of a system that you've got working and tweaked to perfection. Note that a DIXML image needs to be restored from a different drive. Not yet used Clonezilla, but I've heard good things about it.

I don't know exactly how System Restore works internally, but if it actually saves your restore points in a specific folder or file, you could backup that folder (even to a different drive). Just find out where your "System Restore" files are stored, and copy the entire folder to another location. That way, if you ever need that restore point from 5 months ago, you just have to copy the backup back to it's original location and overwrite the current files.

That last part might get a little tricky. Since it's definitely a system folder, you might have to boot into command prompt to be able to overwrite it.

Let me say though, it's really just a hunch. Look into it before you start overwriting system files. And do let me know if it works. =)