How Windows 11’s Point-in-time Restore feature differs from System Restore

You may have heard that Microsoft is working on a new restore feature for Windows 11 called Point-in-time Restore.

The backup feature in a sentence: It allows Windows admins to restore the exact previous state of a Windows PC.

The main focus is to offer fast restores to a previous system state to allow the quickest recovery possible using integrated options.

The biggest different to System Restore, therefore, is that it creates a snapshot of the entire Windows system and not just some files and setting, like System Restore.

While that sounds like a great addition to Windows and could make some backup apps unnecessary, this is not the case entirely, as there are downsides to this as well.

Probably the biggest letdown is that it is capped to 72 hours. Means, it won’t help if the issue occurred before that period and was not noticed until then. Microsoft says that this is the maximum and that restore states will be deleted after being kept for the maximum.

The restore points may also be deleted in other circumstances, mostly when storage that is reserved for the restoration feature is reaching the set maximum size or when the device itself is running low on disk space.

Windows 11 creates a restore point every 24 hours by default. Here is a table that shows the main differences between Point-in-time Restore and System Restore, according to Microsoft.

Criteria	Point-in-time restore	System Restore
Configuration	System settings	Control panel
Restore point trigger	Scheduled frequency (automatic only)	Event-triggered or manual
Retention	Max 72 hours per restore point	Indefinite (subject to disk usage/cleanup)
Target scope	Full system state	System files and settings; app/user data coverage varies
Management	Will support remote management*	No modern management

Good news is that Point-in-time restore runs locally and while you do need to make sure that enough storage space is available, it could finally be a Windows feature that most Windows 11 users have nothing against.

However, it won’t replace traditional backup software, as these allow you to keep copies indefinitely, something that Point-in-time Restore does not seem to support and probably won’t ever.