True Image Fails to Exclude Folders in "My Documents"

I am doing a "Files and Folders" backup (i.e., NOT an image backup). I want to backup the "My Documents" folder, but I do NOT want to include two folders within My Documents, the My Pictures and the My Music folders. In the "Source Files Selection" dialog, I select "My Documents" and then unselect these two folders. According to all the posts in this forum about this subject, this should work (i.e., I am NOT trying to exclude the folders using the filters page in the wizard).

However, the resulting backup contains ALL files in My Documents.

I have searched both the Acronis Knowledgebase and also this forum. There are threads about excluding from image backups (which cannot be done, of course) but this is NOT an image backup. There are threads about excluding using another dialog, but those threads instruct the user to use the "Source Files Selection" dialog, which is what I am doing.

I have tried backing up by selecting "My Documents" and also by selecting the actual drive and folder where My Documents resides. True Image fails in both cases.

I am using True Image 9.0, Build 3854.

This sure feels like a bug to me, but it is such a fundamental flaw that I cannot imagine the product being usable if this problem was there for everyone.

Edit: I just found that if I don't select My Documents, but instead select every folder within My Documents, and then unselect just the two folders that I don't want, the thing works. Therefore, I think perhaps there is a bug that is specific to My Documents where, once it is selected, you get all of it, no matter what folders within My Documents you unselect.

Further Edit: Actually, once you select a folder, you will always get everything in that folder, regardless of whether you unselect folders contained in that folder. Can this really be true? What good is that?

 

Hello johnmeyer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

I regret to inform you that we have not heard about such problems of Acronis True Image before and I was not able to reproduce this issue on mu computer as well. Thus, we would like to investigate this one with your assistance, if you have time for this of course.

Could you please describe your step-by-step actions, which you took that lead you to this issue? Please create a screen shots of all your steps. In addition, please create Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also try to perform the same actions when booted from Acronis True Image Bootable CD and let us know the results.

After that please submit a request for technical support with the subject indicating that you want to contact Aleksandr Isakov. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

The steps are very simple:

1. Start a Files and Folders backup.
2. Select "My Documents".
3. Within the My Documents folder, unselect "My Pictures" and "My Music".
4. Proceed with the default options, create a name for the TIB backup file, and proceed.
5. Start a restore operation and choose the just-created TIB file.
6. Go to the My Pictures or My Music folders and you will find that ALL of the files in those folders have been backed up, despite having been excluded.

Here is a "Wink" SWF file that is an animated screen capture of my actual steps. If you have a flash player installed, you can use that to play this file, or if not, you can just drop it on your browser and it should play.

This link good for seven days:

http://download.yousendit.com/DEB581655D1303AD

I have also submitted a tech support request and included the above file along with the NFO file you requested.

 

For those reading this thread, I am still working with tech support on this problem. We have found that when booting from a True Image rescue CD, the files and folders backup option fails to show ANY files on the drive in question. While this is a completely different problem than the one I was reporting, it does seem to indicate a problem between my particular computer hardware (which has worked perfectly for 3.5 years, so I don't think it is faulty) and the Acronis software. If we ever figure out what is going on, I'll try to remember to post back here.

 

Further update:

I have now found that this problem is repeatable on a completely different computer. Also, in troubleshooting the problem, I found that if you exclude files only one level from top folder, then everything works. The problem only occurs when attempting to include/exclude files several levels down. For instance:

my documents
--powerpoint
----August
------X sales01.ppt
------ sales02.ppt
------ sales03.ppt
----July
------ sales01.ppt
------ sales02.ppt
------ sales03.ppt

If I only want to backup sales01.ppt in August, and nothing else, then doing the selection as shown above will end up backing up EVERYTHING in the "my documents" folder.

This may also have something to do with My Documents being a special folder -- that I cannot say. Tech support has been unable to to duplicate this problem I have uninstalled an re-installed on the two computers on which I have verified this problem, but this has not helped.

What is really weird is that the problem briefly disappeared on one computer, only to later re-appear. I thought maybe it had something to do with some state the computer was in, so when testing, I started re-booting before backing up, just to make sure I was in a "known" state before doing the backup.

I also just had True Image restore wipe out my entire data partition when I restored the C: drive using image restore (and no, I didn't use "snap restore"). I note that many people on this forum have also reported this problem.

I also found that many of my backups done to external USB drives are corrupt. I found on this forum, that others have reported this. I was able to troubleshoot this and found that backing up to the identical drive placed in USB enclosure "A" would reliably produce corrupt backups, but when placed in enclosure "B" would work just fine. I further verified that all other programs worked with the drive just fine when it was in enclosure "A." Only True Image failed to work.

I have enjoyed this program for many years, but the version I am using sure seems to have problems (9.0.3854). Perhaps I should downgrade to an earlier version. It sure doesn't make me eager to migrate to version 10 ...