Different compression results with same level option

[Roger]

Thinking of buying Bootit BM and Drive Image Backup, I have been testing the imaging with trial versions of IFW, IFD and IFL.
From a 92GB system SSD partition, with compression set to Enhanced Size A, I get an image with nearly 20 GB of size from IFW, running from Windows 7 64 bits, while doing it from booting with every media ((IFW WinRE, IFD and IFL), with the same compression option, I get around a 50% larger size (30GB).
I only did not try IFW with WinPE environment (still haven´t downloaded the Microsoft ADK/AIK).

Is there any reason for this?
As I prefer to do my system backups outside of normal Windows sessions, from media, this is a no-go for me.

Thanks in advance.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

Are you using VSS in Windows? It excludes files/folders that wouldn't be excluded from backups created outside Windows.

[Roger]

Thanks much for your reply.
Indeed, I left the default VSS option... oops, just read about FileNotToBackup in registry in the IFW guide, and checked it has some 20 entries (like, for instance, Windows softwaredistribution folder) so here is the difference.
I guess they are created by Windows itself, right?

One more question: when running it from media, is it the way to exclude certain files/folders from the image, using /exlist parameter in the .ini file?
From the guide, that seems to work in IFD, what about IFW?

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

VSS has some defaults that it uses.

You could use the /exlist option from the command line (it's not available in the INI file). Generally, this would work better with IFW or IFL since command line access is readily available on the boot media. Note that, depending on what you're trying to avoid backing up, doing some disk cleanup, etc. may be the easier route.

[Roger]

Those files and folders are mainly browsers' caches and software installed as stand alone that has separate file backups.

Where must I put the exlist file, inside the TBData folder of the pen?

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

You could put it on the UFD. I usually put it on the partition being backed up so it's obvious. Wherever you put it you'd just reference it from there (e.g. /exlist:g:\excludedfiles.txt).

[Roger]

Weird enough, I managed to build and include an exclusion list but IFW did image everything, from the list and also page file and hibernation file!
I tried on another computer, just plain image, omit both page and hibernation file, and had the same outcome: both were included.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that I am imaging the entire drive and not just the System partition, is that a reason for this faulty behaviour?

[mashedmitten]

Sounds like it.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

How are you determining that the files were included? They'll show up in TBIView and TIBMount, but the contents aren't valid (not backed up). If you restore the image the excluded files are removed (by default). Details are in the manual for the /exlist option.

For really large files you can usually also tell if they're included by the resulting image file size. For example, if the data for the page and hibernation files is included, the .tbi size will be larger than if you've selected to exclude them.

[Roger]

I did check with TBIView and those files were showing the original size (thought they would appear as 0 sized).
By the size of the image, it really did not look like they were included.
I will perform a file restore for a couple of them just to check that out.