Default exclusions

Some files and folders (including files without an extension) are excluded, by default, from backups.

• Windows—The following apply to all Windows devices.
  • Any file or folder with the system, device, temporary, or offline attribute applied to it are excluded.
  • Any file or folder that starts with ~ and has the hidden attribute is excluded. Both criteria must be met to be excluded. If only one criteria is met, the file or folder will be included if it meets a backup rule.
  • Any folder with the reparse point attribute is excluded.
• macOS—For all macOS devices, any file or folder with the following DirectoryEntry (as determined by the readdir_r system method) is excluded.
  • DT_BLK—block device
  • DT_CHR—character device
  • DT_FIFO—named pipe (FIFO)
  • DT_LNK—symbolic link
  • DT_SOCK—UNIX domain socket
  • DT_UNKNOWN—unknown file type

If you are using a newer version of a OneDrive client on macOS (Version 22.002.0103.0004 and later), files that appear as cloud only are not backed up by OpenText Core Endpoint Backup.

OneDrive files that are stored locally are backed up for all macOS OneDrive versions.

 

• File extensions—The following file extensions are excluded.
  • DT_Store
  • gfs
  • hiberfil*.sys
  • log
  • log*
  • ost
  • pagefile*.sys
  • thumbs*.db
  • tmp
  • db-wal
  • db-shm
  • db-journal
  • sqlite-wal
  • sqlite-shm
  • sqlitedb-wal
  • sqlitedb-shm
  • sqlite3-wal
  • sqlite3-shm
• Files without an extension—Files without an extension are excluded unless they are in a folder included in an All Files backup rule. Other categories are looking at specific file extensions, so files without an extension will be excluded from those rules.

• Temp, cache, and runtime data folders—Folders that contain temp or cache files or runtime data are excluded. This list depends on the applications you are running. For example, on Windows, this might include folders located in %Users%\*\AppData\Local, such as folders under %Users%\*\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default or %Users%\*\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. On macOS, this might include folders located in /users/*/Library, such as folders under /users/*/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default or /users/*/Library/Application Support/Slack.

  If you need to back up a folder in one of these locations, for example for browser bookmarks, you need to create an include rule for the specific folder.

• Files and folders using reserved characters—Files and folders containing reserved operating system characters may appear to be protected, but they cannot be restored. Do not use any of the following reserved operating system characters in any files or folders.

  • less than <
  • greater than >
  • colon :
  • quotation marks or double quote "
  • forward slash /
  • backslash \
  • vertical bar or pipe |
  • question mark ?
  • asterisk *