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Specifying Folders to Back Up

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    The Objects step of the wizard is available if you have selected the File level backup option at the Backup Mode step of the wizard.

    In the file-level backup mode, you can create two types of backups:

    • File-level backup that includes individual folders on your computer.
    • Hybrid backup that contains individual folders and specific volumes of your computer.

    At this step of the wizard, you must specify the backup scope — define what folders with files or entire volumes you want to include in the backup. The specified backup scope settings will apply to all computers that are added to the backup job. If a specified object does not exist on one or more computers in the job, the job will skip such object on those computers and back up existing ones.

    To specify the backup scope, in the Choose directories to backup list, select check boxes next to necessary objects. You can include the following data in the backup:

    • Operating system — data pertaining to the OS installed on a protected computer.
    • Personal files — user profile folder including all user settings and data. Typically, the user profile data is located in the Users folder on the system disk, for example, C:\Users.
    • Individual file system objects — folders or volumes of a protected computer.

    To specify individual folders to back up:

    1. Select the The following file system objects check box and click Add.
    2. In the Add Object window, type the path to a folder or volume that you want to back up, for example, D:\Reports or D:\, and click OK.

    To specify the backup scope, you can use wildcards and system environment variables such as %ProgramFiles% or %WinDir%. This may be useful, for example, in case computers added to the backup job run different versions of Microsoft Windows OSes, and actual paths to directories that contain data of the same type differ on these computers.

    Consider the following:

    • You can use only system environment variables — variables defined for the Local System account on computers added to the backup job. User-dependent environment variables are not supported.
    • Environment variables that contain multiple values (such as the %PATH% variable) are not supported.
    • Environment variables that contain other environment variables are not supported.
    1. Repeat steps 1–2 for all folders and volumes that you want to back up.

    Specifying Folders to Back Up Note:

    Mind the following:

    • If you include a system volume in the file-level backup, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows does not automatically include the System Reserved/UEFI or other system partitions in the backup. These volumes are automatically included in the backup only if you select the Operating system option to specify the backup scope.
    • Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows automatically adds to the list of exclusions the following Microsoft Windows objects for all computer users: temporary files folder, Recycle Bin, Microsoft Windows pagefile, hibernate file and VSS snapshot files from the System Volume Information folder.

    Specifying Folders to Back Up 

    Configuring Filters

    To include or exclude files of a specific type in/from the file-level backup, you can configure filters.

    To configure a filter:

    1. At the Objects step of the wizard, click Advanced.
    2. Specify what files you want to back up:
    • If you include a specific folder in the file-level backup, in the Include masks field, specify file names and/or masks for file types that you want to back up, for example, MyReport.pdf, *filename*, *.docx. The resulting Veeam Agent backup will contain only selected files. Other files will not be backed up.

    You cannot specify include masks if you add an entire volume in the backup.

    • In the Exclude masks field, specify files that you do not want to back up in the following ways:
    • If you include an entire volume in the file-level backup, in the Exclude masks field, specify paths to folders that contain files that you do not want to back up. The resulting Veeam Agent backup will contain all folders that reside on the backed-up volume except the files in the specified folders.

    For example, you include the D:\ volume in the backup and specify the D:\Reports\OldReports folder in the Exclude masks field. The resulting backup will contain all folders and files that reside on the volume except files that reside in the D:\Reports\OldReports folder.

    • If you include a specific folder in the file-level backup, in the Exclude masks field, specify file names and/or masks for file types that you do not want to back up, for example, OldReports.rar, *.temp, *.tmp, *.back. The resulting Veeam Agent backup will contain all files except files whose names match the specified names or masks.
    1. Click Add.
    2. Repeat steps 2–3 for each mask that you want to add.

    Specifying Folders to Back Up Note:

    You can also use system environment variables to specify include and exclude masks. In this case, you must type the back slash (\) symbol in the beginning of the mask. For example: \%appdata%.

    Consider the following:

    • To specify include and exclude masks, you can use only system environment variables — variables defined for the Local System account on computers added to the backup job, and cannot use user environment variables. For example, if you specify the \%appdata% exclude mask, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows will exclude the C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Roaming folder from the backup. Application data directories for other user accounts (for example, C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming) will not be excluded from the backup.
    • You cannot use environment variables that contain multiple values or other environment variables to specify include and exclude masks.

    You can use a combination of include and exclude masks. Note that exclude masks have a higher priority than include masks. For example, you can specify masks in the following way:

    • Include mask: *.pdf
    • Exclude mask: *draft*

    The resulting Veeam Agent backup will contain all files of the PDF format that do not contain draft in their names.

    Specifying Folders to Back Up