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Several restore points can be removed automatically by Windows even when they were not deleted manually.
Common causes supported here are:
- Age-based cleanup: point-in-time restore points are automatically deleted after about 72 hours.
- Disk space pressure: restore points are removed starting with the oldest if free space is low.
- Free space threshold: cleanup can happen when free disk space reaches or drops below 20 GB.
- VSS storage limit reached: if the storage allocated for restore points exceeds its configured maximum, older restore points are purged.
- VSS limiting conditions: if Volume Shadow Copy Service cannot preserve prior data because of conditions such as full disk, memory allocation failure, diff area expansion failure, or write errors, all restore points can be removed.
- Windows updates: restore points are created before updates, and updates can also result in older restore points being purged as System Restore manages space automatically.
For Windows 11 point-in-time restore, the default behavior is approximately:
- restore points created every 24 hours
- retention of about 72 hours
- maximum usage limit default of 2% of disk
That means seeing only one recent restore point can happen if older ones aged out, disk space became tight, or VSS cleanup occurred.
Also note the difference between the two restore technologies in the provided material:
- System Restore is described as not affecting personal files.
- Point-in-time restore for Windows restores the entire system state, including apps, settings, and local files, and changes made after the restore point are lost.