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Seeing as my target partition [C:] is around 75GB, the system image backup is ~50GB; does Windows include within the backup image these files?

  • pagefile.sys
  • hiberfil.sys
  • swapfile.sys
JW0914
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kK-Storm
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  • Why are you interested in backing up those files? Upon restoration and a reboot they would be invalidated they all would be invalidated except perhaps the hibernation file. – Ramhound Sep 19 '22 at 20:52
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    I believe WIB ignores the hibernation file. also there is some compression going on during the image process. – Moab Sep 19 '22 at 22:43
  • @Ramhound exactly the opposite - I'm not interested in backing up those files (to have more space on my backup drive), I just want to know if Windows does backup them. – kK-Storm Sep 20 '22 at 06:04
  • What backup program are you using? If using WIB, a much, much more efficient means would be to boot to WinRE and capture a WIM. Windows Image Backup and many third party solutions, while convenient because they can be run while booted to Windows, are often really inefficient compared to capturing WIMs, both in time, storage space required, and parity. That 50GB backup image would be no more than ~20GB if capturing a WIM with compression set to max – JW0914 Feb 25 '24 at 13:06

2 Answers2

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Disk image programs process sectors, not files. They don't care for the file-system, but backup the disk itself.

Most backup programs include in the system image backup only used sectors, and some even compress the data.

If your disk is 75 GB and has 25 GB of free space, then your backup program didn't compress the data. If the free space is less than that, then some compression was done of the data.

harrymc
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    true image can leave out any file or folder you want, by default it ignores the hibernation file. – Moab Sep 19 '22 at 22:45
  • @Moab are you sure about "image can leave out any file or folder you want"? Because 1) it defies the "image" concept itself; 2) I don't see any option for excluding files/folders in "System Image Backup" in Win10. – kK-Storm Sep 20 '22 at 06:07
  • true image can. I have used it for my personal images. – Moab Sep 20 '22 at 22:16
  • @Moab: Yes, third-party backup products are much more evolved than the old and deprecated Windows Backup. – harrymc Sep 21 '22 at 07:53
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup folder lists both pagefiel.sys and hiberfil.sys. This folder lists files, that are expected to be excluded by Windows' VSS, "Volume Shadow Copy Service". I would assume, that Windows Image Backup would also exclude those files. It just does not make sense to back them up, since they technically have temporary data, and both are recreated on demand, if you remove them manually.

Simbiat
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