Hello I am requesting the possibility to exclude files by extension or entire folders from being imaged. For example, I do not have the need to image my temp folder. This option could be added to the backup wizard when creating a new job. Frank

Yeah, that's something we've been thinking about too.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Although I appreciate the fact that different users have different needs, I for one would “vote” that a feature to exclude files/folders from an image not be added to ShadowProtect Desktop.  In my opinion, an image backup utility should concentrate upon creating images—i.e., exact, sector-by-sector (not file-by-file) copies of the volume.

 

I think an easy (and obvious) way to exclude files/folders from the image backup is simply to relocate them to a hard disk drive or partition other than the one containing the operating system which is being imaged.

@Pleonasm

That's interesting that you say this.  We're kind of hearing this from a lot of people actually, this notion of sticking to the fundamentals and doing them very well.  My gut feeling is that this is a reaction to some of the other products in this segment which have sprouted all kinds of ancillary features rather than solidifying their core functionality. 

Nate, I completely endorse the “notion of sticking to the fundamentals and doing them very well” rather than “scope creep”.  I suspect that it not only a wise product development strategy, but also a shrewd marketing approach as well.

 

Minimax, while I don’t know the specifics of your circumstances, you could probably achieve your objective of automatically excluding the contents of the temporary folder by executing a “pre-snapshot” batch file that deletes the files in that folder (or temporarily moves them to another partition).  See section 5.6.11 in the User Guide for ShadowProtect Desktop Edition Version 3.0 for more details.

 Well, in fact we already have the ability to exclude files from the image, we just don't expose it.  This is actually how we exclude the pagefile and hiberfil.

 I'm not against adding new features (including this one, which I believe could be useful), but agree that bug fixes and core improvements should have priority. The problem with other products is that they add lots of new features without fixing existing bugs. The new features often have bugs themselves which, in turn, don't get fixed due to more new features being added. And so the cycle continues.....

 

I agree.

Hi I just want to emphasize that rock-solid reliability in backup and restore is the top priority for me as well. O&O and Acronis could not do that sufficiently. I do not want the SP developer team to neglect this important task. Thus my request is nice to have and not that important. I have other file backup tools that allow me more flexible control over what kind of data is to be backuped. Frank

As an IT administrator and technical consultant, I would argue for you to please not 'dumb down' your software.  If a user does not want this feature, they simply don't need to use it or even see it.  Just include it in 'advanced options'.  For the 'exclude' feature in particular, since you already have the ability, why not give us the 'option'?  Bury it deep in some sub-menu so as to not scare off the newbie or timid user, but please do not restrict normal users and administrators from the option.

 Thanks,
Chris

Excluding files/folders I believe is a very important feature.  I often need to backup a clients machine and they have certain folders that contain gigabytes of info that I don't need (eg dozens of movies, music & other non-work related stuff).  I just need to backup the system (Core OS & business apps) as included in their SLA agreement, but now I have to move all these huge files to an external drive - which can take literally hours, then image the machine (which gets stored for the customer on our servers) and then move all the huge files back - whew!!!  A simple 15 min job now takes hours!

 If this feature already exists - PLEASE RELEASE IT!

 Thanks :-)

I would like to see this feature released.  Shadow Protect Server has nearly every other feature that I need in a total backup solution.

I agree completely.  This is a valuable feature for server and desktop backups.  For existing servers, there is often a large amount of "convenience" files on the C: drive such as a copy of i386, installation files, backups, cd images, etc.  If we could simply exclude those folders, it would dramaticaly reduce our backup sizes.  This has the biggest effect when you are copying the images to another device or transferring them across a WAN to keep an offsite copy.  In those instances, you want to minimize the amount of space used as much as possible. 

 I would also see great value in this for folders containing rapidly changing data or backup files.  For instance, our SQL admin always wants to use a SQL maintenance plan to create a SQL database backup, no matter what other backup method is in place.  These are often written to a local data volume that we are also taking an image of.  If we could exclude that entire folder of SQL backups, it would keep our incremental image files to a much mroe managable size.  For existing servers, we currently have to repartition the disk to give him a space to store this kind of stuff and we don't take an image of it.

 For IT consultants with a lot of customers that do a lot of different things, this could be a HUGE timesaver!  It is the one feature that prevents us from recommending the product to all of our clients. 

 Another useful feature (lower priority than exclusions) would be a way to resize existing partitions on the fly in the OS or from the CD.  A great model for this is Paragon Partition Manager.  It can convert a dynamic disk back to basic and expand a partition without rebooting.  It can also shrink a partition, which can be very handy.  It also does disk imaging.

 Josh

I would love the exclude files feature too. Eg I could exclude the temp shares and MP3 folders and even a directory where some old SP images are kept.