Step 5. Select Backup Mode

At the Backup Mode step of the wizard, select the mode in which you want to create a backup.

  1. In the Backup mode section, select the backup mode. You can select one of the following options:
  • Entire computer — select this option to back up the entire computer image for fast recovery at any level. Deleted, temporary, and page files are automatically excluded from the image to reduce the backup size. With this option selected, you will pass to Storage step of the wizard.
  • Volume level backup — select this option to back up images of specified volumes only, for example only data volumes. Deleted, temporary, and page files are automatically excluded from the image to reduce the backup size. With this option selected, you will pass to the Objects step of the wizard.
  • File level backup — select this option to back up selected files and directories only. This mode still produces an image-based backup, but only with the protected file system objects included in the image. With this option selected, you will pass to the Objects step of the wizard.

If necessary, you can edit the backup mode settings after you create the backup job.

  1. [For entire computer backup] If you want to include in the backup one or more external USB drives, select the Include external USB drives check box. With this option selected, Veeam Agent will include in the backup all external USB drives that are connected to the Veeam Agent computer at the time when the backup job starts. To learn more, see the Backup of External Drives section in the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows User Guide.

Step 5. Select Backup ModeNOTE

Consider the following:

  • The File level backup option is not available if you have selected the Failover cluster option at the Job Mode step of the wizard.
  • Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows cannot back up hidden non-system volumes.
  • File-level backup is typically slower than volume-level backup. Depending on the performance capabilities of your computer and backup environment, the difference between file-level and volume-level backup job performance may increase significantly. If you plan to back up all folders with files on a specific volume or back up large amount of data, we recommend that you configure volume-level backup instead of file-level backup.

Step 5. Select Backup Mode

Page updated 2025-11-04

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