TI Home 2009: Can I exclude folder during partition backup?

Yes you can.  Examples -

C:\Documents and Settings\
C:\Program Files\
C:\WINDOWS\

You do need to include the drive letter every time, and the closing backslash is also required.  Wildcards don't seem to work though, unfortunately.

Thanks for the suggestion, which I followed,  but it didn't work for me.  I tried excluding my own specific profile:

C:\Documents and Settings\Phil\

... but it's all still there in the image created overnight.

The folder name will be there, but none of its files or subfolders should be.  There doesn't appear to be any way to prevent the folder names from being included - I've been into this with Acronis Support in the Wilders forums and this was their recommended method.

Hi Earthling.  That's not what I found.  The folder is there, and so are all the child folders and files - some 19 GB of it.  This is all backed up using another utility (NTBackup) so I could do without the duplication.  The partition image takes four or five hours to a USB2.0 external drive, so a "test" isn't without "cost".

I'd looked into repartitioning the drive into a system and data partition, and using a junction point to link the two, but it turns out (from a search of these pages) that True Image will follow a junction point but this will cause problems as the destination drive isn't being locked.  Ideally I'd like to keep the flexibility of a single partition, so it would be really useful if I could get this exclusion working.  I have a lot of large map files (*.amf from Anquet.com) which are also backed-up separately.  I excluded this file type, and found that all the folders were there (as you suggest) but the files weren't.  I have seen postings which suggest that it isn't possible to exclude a folder during a partition imaging operation, and it looks like that might well be the case from my experience.  Pity it's not definitively documented!

Phil

Hi Philip

Here's the old thread from Wilders.  Hope it helps

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=246223

Philip:

Creating a separate data partition is the way to go.  Your data does need frequent backups, but your system does not.  I do my system partition backup about once a month using ATI, but my data files, kept on separate partitions, are backed up automatically twice a day using a different product.

Having data and system in one partition means you not only lose recent personal files in the event of needing to restore, but also causes your system backup files to be unnecessarily large.

When I decided how to partition the drive, I thought I'd try a single partition in the belief I'd be able to exclude the Data on the disk.  Not so.  I've looked at the Wilders thread - I wonder if it only works for a top-level folder?

Phil

Have you tried C:\Documents and Settings\Phil\*.*  ?  Though I'm guessing that won't exclude files in the subfolders, only those at the first level.

 EDIT - I have just tested that on a data partition and it did exclude all files, including those in subfolders.

Which version are you using?

I'd be tempted to try a test, but it takes five hours...

:-(

I should have mentioned this - I'm running from a CD, not from an installed version.  I figured I might as well save the space...

It shouldn't take too long if the exclusion works.  I use ATI 11 and it backs up my XP partition - OS and installed software only - in about 10 minutes, and 15 minutes for Vista.  Using the CD will only affect timing if the CD version (it's Linux based) lacks the right disk controller drivers.

The archive, on high (but not Max) compression was 31 GB.  I have a LOT of software installed.  Excluding my Profile would roughly halve that.  I'll test it out on another system over the weekend.

Thanks for your interest.  Just an enthusiast, or do you have a connection with Acronis?

Phil

I've been taking a closer look at this test archive and I'm pretty confident it will do what you want.  It ignored all files within the first level folder for which I set the *.* exclusion, including all files in subfolders, but it did archive all other files and folders in the partition.

I haven't tested restoring such an image, but I assume it would just restore the empty folders, so essential to have their contents backed up some other way.

I'm not professionally involved in any way, just love computers - and the Acronis forums in particular.  K0LO, MudCrab and others here have simply transformed my level of understanding of what is going on behind the scenes.

Thanks.  I'll check it out in a few days on a machine with little more than the basic OS on it, and I'll report back then.

Phil

Ran some tests, using a recently-installed PC with less than 6GB disk utilisiation, saving images to a 16 GB USB flash drive - took under 20m to save and verify each time.

Booting from a TI Home 2009 CD, I tried excluding:

C:\Documents and Settings\
C:\i386\*.*
C:\Compaq\AUDIO\*.*

Didn't work.  In each case there were files present in the archive which shouldn't have been there according to the Help (as available from the running CD version).

This PC already had TI Home V.11 installed permanently.  Using the same exclusions, it DID work: the only "surprise" was that all subfolders were recorded, as were any files without extensions (note the dot in my wildcard!).

That looks like a bug in TI Home 2009 - Recovery CD.  It makes it worth installing it permanently on the heavily-loaded laptop and seeing if that makes a difference.

Clarification, when imaging from the fully-installed version of TI11:

Subfolders and files in the without extensions were only included where the exclusion path ended *.*

So, C:\Documents and Settings\ was not there at all .

Phil

I have both ATI 11 and ATI 2009 Rescue CDs.  I'll try both.  I think my earlier test was from Windows, but not absolutely sure.

EDIT re your last post, that is consistent with the Acronis advice in the Wilders thread.  What we have here is inconsistency between the installed and bootable CD versions.

Test results:

1. From TI 11 in Vista.  If Drive:\Folder\ is excluded the archive does not contain that folder at all.

2. From TI 11 CD Full mode.  If Drive:\Folder\ is excluded it doesn't work.  The archive still includes that folder and all of its files and subfolders.

3. From TI 11 CD Full mode.  If Drive:\Folder\*.* is excluded it still doesn't work.  The archive includes that folder and all of its files and subfolders.

I haven't tested ATI 2009, but could test the CD if necessary.  I don't have it installed.

Thanks for that.  I guess it's a bug in the CD version, and it'll be worth installing TI permanently on my newly rebuilt machine.

Think this'll make it back to Acronis?

Phil

I think it's worth installing quite apart from this fault.  A backup of my Vista system partition from Vista to eSATA takes 14 minutes, no rebooting required.  The same backup from the ATI 11 CD to the same eSATA takes 40 minutes plus the time to reboot.  No contest.  I haven't used 2009 much, but no reason to believe it's much different.

No chance of Acronis doing anything about this fault.  One can only hope they pass it on to the 2010 development team.

Thanks for all the help - much appreciated.

Phil

Be nice if someone from Acronis would just confirm it's on the to do list.

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, we can confirm that this is a known issue. In some cases reported situation is not reproduced (program excludes files correctly) but in some it does occur and exclusions do not work.

We have already reported this to our Experts, we'll have to test it on our own hardware and escalate to Development.

Thank you for your understanding!

That's good to know.  Much appreciated.

PH

Lesson: use ATI installed rather than from a boot disc. Here's my experience. I imaged my daughter's P8400 Vista notebook with an ATI-11 boot disc. Explorer said 96 GB used, the resulting tib file was 76 GB. Some major exclusions were ignored. The process took 3 hours (to a 3.5" eSATA HDD).

Then I removed her 2.5" HDD and put it in a Belkin eSATA caddy on my Q6600 desktop running XPproSP3. Using the installed version of ATI-11 took 13 minutes and gave a 17 GiB tib file. The exclusions all worked:
G:\pagefile.sys
G:\hiberfil.sys
G:\"System Volume Information"\
G:\Users\CathyAdmin\Documents\
G:\Users\CathyAdmin\Pictures\
G:\Users\CathyAdmin\Desktop\
G:\Users\CathyAdmin\Videos\
G:\Users\CathyAdmin\Music\

I then imaged my own computer desktop - the 10 GiB tib file took less than 5 mins!

The installed version has various features the boot disc doesn't have, like setting CPU priority (defaults to Low but I chose High). I had been using the boot disc instead of the installed version for 2 years thinking it is better to use an OS entirely independent of the data it is operating on. But now I will change to the installed version. I am encouraged by on-screen messages such as "now locking G:" that give me confidence Acronis knows what it is doing.

actually I use "NexStar Hard Drive Dock" rather than Belkin. They accept both 2.5" and 3.5" HDD and cost about $50

Alexander wrote:

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, we can confirm that this is a known issue. In some cases reported situation is not reproduced (program excludes files correctly) but in some it does occur and exclusions do not work.

We have already reported this to our Experts, we'll have to test it on our own hardware and escalate to Development.

Thank you for your understanding!

Unfortunately these "Experts" have still not been able to fix it (I'm using the latest build of ATIH 2010). After it didn't seem to work properly with my real backup tasks I tested it thoroughly with the following three exclude formats with full partition test backups (test partition with a few thousand files and a little under 1 GB of data):

S:\backuptest_source\testdir1\testdir2\testdir3
S:\backuptest_source\testdir1\testdir2\testdir3\
S:\backuptest_source\testdir1\testdir2\testdir3\*.*

The source directory testdir3 contains several files and subdirectories on several levels.

Results: The first two formats produced a corrupt but seemingly (backups are smaller) empty destination directory testdir3, the third format did not exclude any files or directories.

Or in other words: Of the three possible formats non did work. Worse even: Two of them corrupted the file/directory structure, something that must not happen IN ANY CASE!

Conclusion: Exclude functionality does - after a long long time - STILL not work. (At least not in my environment.) Yes, it may even pose a threat to the integrity of your data.

Acronis, I am sorry to say but: It's a shame. If this were a new or one of only a few bugs in ATIH 2010 and if you showed us that you're really trying to fix it... ok. But that's obviously not the case. Honestly: I used to work in software development about 15 years ago. In those days such incompetence would have caused some heads to roll...

I have done some tests on an installed version of Acronis True Image Home 2010 v13.0.0.7046 in WinXP Pro SP3. I used "Disk and Partition Backup" to backup my C: partition. I tried to exclude C:\WINDOWS directory with the following exclusions:

C:\WINDOWS\*.*\ --> C:\WINDOWS present as are the files in it's root. Subfolders also present including the files inside them
C:\WINDOWS\*.* --> C:\WINDOWS present including it's subfolders and their files. Files in root of C:\WINDOWS not present (except dotless ones)
C:\WINDOWS\*\ --> C:\WINDOWS present including the files in it's root. Subfolders not present.
C:\WINDOWS\* --> C:\WINDOWS not present
C:\WINDOWS\ --> C:\WINDOWS not present
C:\WINDOWS --> C:\WINDOWS not present

So if you want to keep the directory but just make it empty, you could add two exclusion rules, for example:
C:\WINDOWS\*.*
C:\WINDOWS\*\
This would keep the folder C:\WINDOWS present in the *.tib file but it would be empty (except any dotless files would still be in it's root). Acronis True Image Home 2010 obviously can't handle dotless files if using wildcards.

I will be using this to exclude all the files and folders under D:\Programs\uTorrent\downloads\ without deleting the "downloads" folder itself. :-)