As far as I’m aware it is certainly more tolerant of system restore. That said I would still suggest disabling the self-defence module, mainly because if it doesn’t work completely or without issues, then you are going to have to do it again anyway.

Personally I have had system restore disabled for as long as I can remember (certainly as long as I have had avast over eleven years). It isn’t a backup as such as it doesn’t cover 100% of what is on your system.

I would suggest investigating hard drive imaging software as that makes an exact copy of your Partition or Hard Drive.