How to exclude an archive during a backup

Help! How do I exclude an archive during a backup

I have two pc's on the same network. I'll call them 'pc-a' and 'pc-b'.

First, I successfully archived 'pc-a' disk to 'pc-b'.

Second, I successfully archived 'pc-b' disk to 'pc-a'.

However, upon further inspection, I discovered that the backup of 'pc-b' included the 'pc-a' archive. This is not necessary and increased the size of the backup and the amount of time it took to complete it.

Under Tools... Settings...Copy and backup options... 'skip archive files in archive library' is checked.

Also, when I clicked on 'Exclude from copy/backup', all three of the default categories are not checked. Do I need to check 'Auxiliary files' to exclude the archive?

When I look in the archive folder, i see files that end in '.pbf' and '.pfm'. What are these files?

Finally, when I ran the backups, 'Image splitting' was enabled by default. The maximum split size is set to 4000 MB. As a result, I have quite a few 'arc_...' files. I think this would be necessary if I was backing up to DVD, but if I am backing up to a network drive or USB external drive, is it still necessary or recommended?

I am using Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition

Thank you.

 

I would recommend disabling image splitting if backing up to an external hard drive, keeps the files simpler. If 'skip archive files in archive library' is checked, there's no need to use the file exclusion. We recommend keeping those settings to defaults unless otherwise. Auxiliary, page files, and hiber.sys files can be excluded.

 

Thanks for the reply. However, I still don't understand:

Under Tools... Settings...Copy and backup options... 'skip archive files in archive library' is checked. But the archive was still backed up. I think this is because the archive is not in the database and I don't think it would be in the database because in this instance, this pc was the target network drive used in a backup from another pc.

When I look in the archive folder, i see files that end in '.pbf', '.pfm' and '.###". I figured based on size that the files ending in '.###' are the data files. But what are the '.pbf' and '.pfm' files?

Thank you.

 

Depending how you backed up, the PBF file could be its own partition if you ran a single partition backup and has all its data, or if the backup is large and splitted, the PBF is rather just a LEAD file for the restore, but does not have the actually data. PFM is the log file and has no actually data. You can confirm where the your actual data is by going into the "File Transfer Wizard" under Tools and double click the PBF or 000 file to see or not see the content.