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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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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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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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