User`s guide

What does a disk or volume backup store?

For supported file systems, a disk or volume backup stores only those sectors that contain data. This

reduces the resulting backup size and speeds up the backup and recovery operations.

Windows

The swap file (pagefile.sys) and the file that keeps the RAM content when the machine goes into

hibernation (hiberfil.sys) are not backed up. After recovery, the files will be re-created in the

appropriate place with the zero size.

A volume backup stores all other files and folders of the selected volume independent of their

attributes (including hidden and system files), the boot record, the file allocation table (FAT) if it

exists, the root and the zero track of the hard disk with the master boot record (MBR). The boot

code of GPT volumes is not backed up.

A disk backup stores all volumes of the selected disk (including hidden volumes such as the

vendor's maintenance partitions) and the zero track with the master boot record.

Linux

A volume backup stores all files and folders of the selected volume independent of their

attributes, a boot record and the file system super block.

A disk backup stores all disk volumes as well as the zero track with the master boot record.

Volumes with unsupported file systems will be backed up sector-by-sector.

Note on Linux machines

You can include both Windows and Linux volumes (partitions) in one centralized backup policy.

For instance, it is possible to set up a policy to back up volume C: on Windows machines and partition

/dev/hda1 on Linux machines.

Unlike Windows, there is no clear distinction between a volume (partition) and a folder (directory) in

Linux. Linux has the root partition (denoted as /), to which elements of various types—including hard

disks, directories, and system devices—are attached (mounted), forming a tree similar to the file and

folder structure in Windows.

For example, let a Linux machine contain a hard disk which is split into three volumes, or partitions:

the first, second, and third partitions. These partitions are available in the tree as /dev/hda1,

/dev/hda2, and /dev/hda3, respectively. To perform a disk backup of the, say, third partition, one can

type /dev/hda3 in the row of the Volumes to back up selection rules dialog box.

Furthermore, a Linux partition can be mounted anywhere inside the tree. Say, /dev/hda3, can be

mounted as a “subdirectory” inside the tree, such as /home/usr/docs. In this case, one can type

either /dev/hda3 or /home/usr/docs in the Volume field to perform a disk backup of the third

partition.

In general, when setting up a centralized policy to perform volume backups of Linux machines, make

sure that the paths entered in the Volume field correspond to partitions (such as /dev/hda2 or

/home/usr/docs in the previous example), and not to directories.