How do you exclude files from a system image backup?

I would suggest Aomei backupper, only due to the fact that it would do the both jobs you would need to perform to meet your safety needs

You can use it to automatically create an image file of you system disk or partition (you would need to keep system and data separate which make good sense anyway, and is not that difficult these days with 3rd party disk managers ), which would include the hidden boot partition[s] that is part of today's default windows install

You can then put together a series of file backups to be run as you wish based on variations on Location and file types (great to prevent backing up temporary, or other non required files), you could set up to backup your system once a week and also a data file backup that runs once a week with differential backups running daily.

You could backup things such as your samples occasionally, and day to day work daily or even hourly if it's ultra critical

You can achieve these using separate systems, but it's better, in my opinion, to learn one software package if it's as important as your data, (the system setup is important but is relatively simple to recover from a disaster than your irreplaceable data )

I would suggest that you retain the external drive for backups exclusively and your D: drive for your samples and other data, this would allow you to keep our backups disconnected from your system except when actually being made - a good idea for ransomware protection

D is an external or just another partition on the same drive as C?

I'd try to do this if possible:

Primary drive: contains C for Windows and D for data.

Secondary drive might be an internal or external E.

Use SyncBackFree to back up most or all of D to some totally different drive, presumably E external. No image involved.

Use Paragon or Macrium or Aomei or whatever to make a single image file containing ALL of C plus whatever other partitions are needed to run Windows. That might be 4 partitions. D deliberately excluded. That image file saved on E for sure and possibly also on D if you have the space on D. No folder exclusion.

I consider my image files to be just another very important data file, so I keep them on my data drive and back them up with SyncBackFree to another drive. So I've got a backup of my images.

Just another idea.

ignatzatsonic said:

Paragon Backup & Recovery Free | Paragon Software

Above is the product to which I had referred.

Not sure why they call it "preview" and I'm wondering if it works only for a limited time?

Let us know how that "exclude" feature works. I saw something somewhere on Paragon site that implied that you can RESTORE only certain folders, but that the image itself apparently includes all folders? But I didn't really try to figure it out.

Yea, I think they changed the name from Free to Preview. But I will contact them and find out if it's a trial or not.

22878 said:

Does anyone know if this works in Windows 10: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pre...80819(v=ws.10) or if there is a different way to exclude folders from a system image created with the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) feature?

What seems to be causing confusion here is that 'Backup and Restore (Windows 7)' is actually two separate but linked features. One is the system imaging, but the other is a file-by-file backup of selected folders.

It is the file backup feature that for which, I suspect, those registry keys are intended. System imaging is a 'whole system' snapshot, so would not use them.