By design Backup Exec will exclude various files and folders from backup jobs where the selections were made against the file system within areas contained under drive letters such as C: D: etc

The reason for this behaviour is that there are items within the file system that either do not need to be backed up at all or should be backed up using a specific method and not as part of a drive letter selection.

The main categories of files that would be excluded from backup jobs being:

• Temporary file that are recreated by the operating system on restart
• Anything listed in the Operating System Backup and Restore registry keys ( specifically FilesNotToBackup and FilesNotToSnapshot ) because Backup Exec honours Microsoft's registry settings for exclusions.  (More information available https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/bb891959%28v=vs.85%29.aspx )
• Anything subject to Active File Exclusion (AFE) as it should be backed up using a specific type of backup job such as a System State Backup, Shadow Copy Component backup or specific Agent backup
• Any custom exclusions a Backup Administrator has defined within Backup Exec.

Note: The exact list of affected files is dynamic against all the possible operating systems versions, updates, installed applications, enabled features and options that might be available now or in the future and as such cannot be documented as the potential list could be infinite.

 

For either ongoing monitoring or DR purposes, customers should not expect all the files on a system to be protected by a file system/drive letter backup but should ensure they backup any given server using the correct method for the components and applications installed on that server. Backup job types to be considered are therefore:

• System State
• Items within Shadow Copy Components (linked to either installed applications or enabled features of the operating system)
• Specific Agent backups for Applications and Databases
• File System backups

When selecting files or folders for backing up via drive letter selections ( such as C: D: etc ) a number of files and folders that appear to be within the selections will be automatically and silently excluded from the resulting backup job when it runs.

The exact symptoms experienced may vary however the most commonly seen scenarios are:
1) The byte count seen within the job log and job monitor against the backup job will not match the byte count against what was understood to have been selected for the backup job.
2) If the restore selections for the backup sets are checked after the backup completes, then various files and folders that were believed selected could be missing.
3) If a job ONLY contains files and folders that are subject to such an exclusion then the backup job will be successful however if the job log is opened and carefully checked, the log will contain the text "This backup set may not contain any data."