However, with Macrium, this is not possible, since the only file/dir exclusion specification in a backup definition affects ALL types of backups from that backup definition, even the Full backup, which would in this case of course be no good.

Only Full backups then contain these files. :-)īy simply excluding this directory from Differential/Incremental backups, knowing that things in there never change despite the changing timestamps, it seriously reduces the space/time used on diff/inc backups.

With backup software used in the past many years, I have solved that problem by moving the 'historic files' into a sub-directory of my Outlook folder directory, aptly named 'Excluded-From-Differential-Backup'. On the initial 'Full' backup, obviously all files should be backed up as usual, but on the scheduled differential/incremental, the never changing files should be excluded, to prevent from creating unnecessary oversized Diff/Inc backups. This presents a problem for backups, because it falsely oversizes all Diff/Inc backups by including these oversized files. Meaning, that even when a data file is never actually really changed, it's timestamp will change every day anyway. Outlook will update the date/time stamp on ANY PST file that is attached to it. They are attached to MS Outlook so they can be accessed, but are not added to or actually changed. Some are currently being used/added to, and as such obviously should be backed up in Diff/Incr backups. I have a lot of Outlook PST files (history squirreled away).

Macrium reflect exclude folder