The Restore point option of Windows XP has the operating system taking a snapshot of your overall system (mostly the system areas on the hard drive along with documents), saving compressed information about the hard drive’s contents at regular intervals allowing almost instant file restoration should the computer experience a system crash. These restore points can be set manually on when it is to take snapshots of the system for backup or as experienced XP users know, every time you opt to upgrade a critical part of your operating system that may have bearing on the overall stability of your computer.
The restore points can be accessed at boot allowing you to restore the state of your desktop or computer at the last time it took a snapshot. This would however be only effective for system (software crashes), and not hardware failure for any backup on the same hard drive that fails would be rendered unreachable. The best way to save information is to do regular back-up procedures that saves documents, and other vital information onto other media that is non-volatile, meaning unaffected by the computer’s health such as on optical drives and others that can be used to restore files you address the hardware problem.