TI11h - Exclude System Files - what impact?

TI home 11.0 (build*8,053)
XP home Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3 Build 2600

Doing an Image backup of system disk

Nowhere can I find a simple explanation of the impact of ticking the box "Exclude all system files and folders". Same for "exclude all hidden files and folders" when doing an image backup of my system disk.

I'm hoping that what it does is exclude all those files that are constantly changing, and do not need to be restored. Such as the swap file.

But elsewhere I saw a note that TI automatically excludes the swap file.

So, what exactly is the impact. Do I have a worthwhile image of my system disk or not, if I tick "exclude system files and folders".

I've no idea why anyone would want to tick "exclude hidden files and folders". Perhaps a quick explanation of the impact of that too, please.

Of course, what I am trying to achieve is minimising the size of my disk image,, since my 40Gb notebook doesn't have a lot of space on it! (and the common refrain of "add a bigger hard disk" is not so easy with a notebook).

Perhaps we can have on FAQ some general tips on what we can happily exclude from an image of the system disk, such as all the common temp file locations - at least for XP, Explorer, Office.

Hope some one can help. Perhaps it would be nice to add the answer to the FAQ area.

Thanks.

 

With ATI, tThe swap/hibernation file is always ignored except for a placeholder in the backup file since it is then reconstructed by windows on the first boot after a restore. Thus, no point spending time and disk space on so large and unnecessary a file in the backup.

 

It was a pretty straight forward question -
"what is the impact of ticking the box "Exclude all system files and folders" ?

Your answer did not address that AT ALL.

Can anyone actually answer the question ?

 

Sorry. I can't be everything everyone wants me to be but I'll answer the more obvious parts:

The impact is that the system files will not be restored if you try to restore the image. And therefore, if you're doing a restore of a sys partition, it probably won't boot correctly and very likely won't run correctly andt he programs quite possibly might not run correctly, depnding on how obsolete the registry entries are.

If you only want to backup/restore some data files and not others, then a file-by-file backup (aka, mycomputer backup) is probably a better choice than a partition backup and in that case one might prefer to skip any system files since it would rarely be useful to restore those on a file by file basis (that is, short of a full sys partition restore).

 

A straight forward question that took you 249 words to get around to.

 

My guess, and that's all it is since I didn't write the program, is that you can probably backup your C drive with a System State backup and a data backup made by excluding the system stuff. You can pick one or the other depending on what you changed, the Excluded System Files backup is the compliment to the System State Backup.

IMO, making an image of the full partition makes more sense than fooling with any of this nonsense.

 

Hello Richardb43 ,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

“Exclude System Files and Folders” will help you in case you have large amount of data on your system partition and you want to backup it as partition excluding operating system.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

Well, it was unclear how easily you might understand. That's not a digl it jsut means I can't tell how knowledgeable byou are from your post.

If you know the purpose of the system files then you can sort of guess what might happen if you restore a partition excluding the system files. Various system files are updated dynamically so it's always risky to restore a system partition but leave out the system files. The exception would be if you only want to restore documents and such.

 

shieber,

I think you might have misunderstood my post. It was not directed at you.
The OP asked a question that you were kind enough to respond to. The OP, apparently unhappy with your reply, stated -

“It was a pretty straight forward question -
"what is the impact of ticking the box "Exclude all system files and folders" ?
Your answer did not address that AT ALL.
Can anyone actually answer the question ?”

It was that, as I quoted, to which my post was directed.

 

Since which version is ATI automatically excluding swap files ?
Can ATI 9.0 Home do it as well ?

 

Hello TheWeaz and chrizio,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Excluding System files and Folders will exclude all files with system extensions from your image, obviously, you will not be able to recover such image and boot from the partition you recovered. This option is intended to include onto image all files except for system ones, e.g. you want just to include all data to your backup and do not want to select it manually in My Data backup, but backup entire partition.

Acronis True Image Home 9.0 excluding swap files from archive, as well as all later versions.

Detailed information about Acronis True Image Home product can be found in User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky