A change in thinking about Disk backup vs File/Folders
I have two drives in my system. I create offsite backups by booting the rescue media and then doing a disk/partition backup of each drive to an external USB drive.
After messing about with my backup schemes yesterday, I came to the realization that rather than do a disk backup of the D: (data) drive, a File/Folders backup would be better.
Some of my thinking...
It's a data drive, so why do I need $Recycle.Bin, System Volume Information? I don't. On a disk style backup, one has to explicitly exclude items whereas on a File/Folders backup they are explicitly included. The UI is better for including than it is for excluding.
Much the same thinking for running backups from the Windows ATI UI. The one thing to be cautious about is that the protected operating system files and folders cannot be seen unless configuring to see them in Windows Explorer. It's too easy to inadvertently either include them if they are not desired, or not include them if they are desired (by clicking the checkbox next to the Name column header). Therefore, my thinking is whenever I define the source for a backup I should be sure to show protected OS files.
I found that it was too easy to configure a F/F backup task, then add a file to the root of the drive and find that it was not being backed up. So what I ended up needing to do is 1) uncheck the Windows Explorer view option to hide protected OS files, 2) check the box next to the Name column header in the ATI UI, 3) uncheck the $Recycle.Bin and System Volume Information folders, 4) save the new backup task, 5) re-hide the protected OS files.
Does that all make sense?
BrunoC wrote:To add... a downside of doing the Files/Folders backup is that to use Windows Explorer to view the file contents is very slow for the F/F mode as compared with the Disk mode.
That's why I stick with full disk or partitions backups. They seem to just go much faster if you need to restore everything, and they allow you to do the file/folder restores from them too.
When using rescue media, you don't get the same default exclusions, but the OS also isn't booted up so many of the temp files don't exist either.
In Windows, if you click the main box at the top of a folder on a FF backup, such as the root of a drive, i think it would capture new files added there too. It depends if you select that top box, or just the individual files below it if newly added files would get included later on.
I may need to test that again, but that's how it used to work for me anyway.