How to exclude system restore files from backup

It seems that Vista System Restore files take up a lot of space on my hard drive. I have an automatic differential backup scheduled daily. The backup gets bigger each day mainly do to restore points. I don't want to delete them daily but I would like to exclude them from the backups.

Is this possible? If so what are the files to exclude and where are they located?

 

Hello sblakeok,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please be aware that Vista restore points are not saved as actual files, so it's not possible to exclude them from backups. Please have a look at this article for some details on Vista restore points structure.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

It's the Volume Shadow Copy that's getting bigger, which Vista uses for maintaining the ability to restore. It's more comprehensive than the syustem resotre method used in XP but takes up a lot more disk space.

However, you can adjust the amount of space the Vista uses for system restore -- defualt is 15% of harddisk space, iirrc-- which is whopping on some of today's harddisks:

1) Click on start menu
2) Click All Programs,
3) Click Accessories
4) On the accessories menu, right click on Command Prompt and select "run as administrator"
5) Enter into the command prompt "vssadmin list shadowstorage"

You should see the amount of storage used and the maximum amount allocated.

To change the allocation:

Do steps 1-4 from above to get the Command Prompt
Enter into the Command Prompt "vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=[your hard disk]: /On=[your hard disk]: /MaxSize=[amount of space to allocate]"

To allocate 3 GB on Drive D, you'd use this:
"vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=D: /On=D: /MaxSize=3GB"

Note that, just as when allocating resources to XP's System Restore, the smaller the space allocated, the fewer restore points you will have.

 

This was so much easier in XP. :sigh:

 

I set the following as an exclusion:

C:\System Volume Information\{*