Do exclusions speed up backups?
I am working on a new backup plan, using Acronis TIH 2011. When I do a partition backup, and set some exclusions like my documents folder, the estimated size does not decrease. From what I have found out, from this forum, there is still a placeholder file which is the same size. An empty file, I guess?
The reason I am doing exclusions is to cut down on the time it takes for the backup. This will be over a wireless network, so I'm trying to cut down on the transfer times, too. My question is, does this placeholder file still take up the same amount of time backing up? Including, network transfer speeds.
Thanks for help. Let me know if there is any more info I can provide.
Thanks for the reply, Pat. I just want to make sure I'm not doing anything wrong. When I go into disk mode, I select the only hard drive on my system. Then, when I go to exclude folders, the "estimated backup size" never decreases. Even if I select every partition, the estimated size still remains the same. Does that sound correct?
Well, I just did a test backup. I used disk mode, but excluded both partitions that are on the drive I selected. I let the backup run for 30 minutes, it said it still had 17 hours to go. So, I'm guessing it is not excluding anything. As I said earlier, the estimated backup size never decreases, even when I exclude something.
Any ideas why the exclude is not working?
Tommy,
It might be the way you have entered the exclusions. Before I answered your post, I quickly tried it on my computer. I created a disk and partition backup and enter *.* in the exclusion mask. The backup only contained the folder structure, with no file in it.
I then tried to exclude C:\ entirely and it didn't work.
I then tried to exclude specific subfolders under C:\, and they were excluded.
So it looks like you cannot exclude entire partititions, just folders under the partitions.
Sure enough, I excluded "*.*" and backed up entire disk. I'm still surprised that it took up 5GB, but that's much better than the 100GB that it would've taken up.
I still can't get the "estimated backup size" to update, when I exclude folders. I'd like to know how many GB's a backups would take up, before I do it. But, it just says 106GB, no matter how many folders I exclude. It makes me worry that it really won't exclude those folders.
I wouldn't pay attention to the estimated size. It is not clear that this estimate is capable of taking into account exclusions that are created by the user...