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Excluding Users Folder from C: Partition Backup

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I have created a partition backup for C:\ and have excluded the Users Folder because it is 200 GB and I am backing up over a home network to the cloud and it is only getting 10MB\sec upload speed, so I am trying to speed the backup.  I will backup Users later.

I selected C:\Users under exclusions yet my backup says it is 352 GB, which is the entire C: drive.  How do I exclude the Users Folder so my backup won't take 5 days?

 

Thanks.

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John,

Please see the ATIH 2016 User Guide: Excluding items from backup which describes how to exclude items, including the use of wildcard characters etc.

Make sure that when you add an exclusion that you press the Enter key to get this to 'stick' and if necessary, save your settings then go back in to check that the new exclusions are still present.

We have seen a few users reporting that some of their exclusions have been ignored but I do not believe that any specific cause or solution was determined for this.

I would not exclude the C:\users folder altogether. In this folder, you have important system files (part of the registry, for example) Your users profiles could be so corrupted upon restore that you would have to reinstall Windows and your apps. Even if you back it up separately, you could face synchronization issues for some applications.

You can however exclude content files or folders that are in your user sub-folder (video, photos, documents, downloards, etc.). That will force you to insert more than one exclusion, but this is way safer.

Agreed - at a minimum, you need C:\users  C:\public   C:\default users (shortcut) and C:\default (shortcut).  You will also need at least one administrator account to if you plan to restore this image.  If these accounts are not restored, you'll have issues with the OS and/or no way to create an administrator account without an exisgting admin account.