AOMEI Backupper Help Guides

Sometimes our files can be lost due to virus attacks, ransomware intrusion, disk corruption, accidental deletion, etc. Therefore, it is important to make backups of your files from time to time.

In AOMEI Backupper's file and folder backup feature, Files and folders backup can be backed up to an image file for convenient storage of your data.

This feature is very useful to secure your data. With this feature, you can easily recover files and folders in case of files and folders loss.

How to Back up Files and Folders in AOMEI Backupper

Here are the detailed steps about how to back up files/folders. Before you start, please download free backup software AOMEI Backupper Standarda and install it on your computer.

1. In the left tab page, select Backup and then select File Backup.

2. You can name it for "Task Name" box to help you distinguish it from other backups.

3. Click “Add File" or “Add Folder" so you can select files/folders you want to back up. (You can add multiple folders and files as the source; You can also directly drag folders and files to the Backupper as the source.)

Tips:

• You can click the "funnel" icon to open the "Filter Settings" after you add the source folders. (A paid feature)
• After clicking  “Add Folder"  you can configure file inclusion/exclusion mask and folder exclusion mask for this task via "Filter Settings". Please noted that this feature is in the paid version.

The paid version of Aomei Backupper can help you back up files with file extension. When you add folders, you can open the Filter settings so that you can set up file inclusion/exclusion mask.

     1) The File Inclusion Mask can specify the files that you need to back up. Wildcards are supported and separate multiple masks with semi-colon(*.doc;*.xls;*.ppt ).

     With this mask, you can configure including backup according to file extensions, such as .doc, .xls, .ppt, and so on. So, only files with the same extensions will be backed up to the target path.

     For example, you would like to only back up .doc files in the selected source folders. You can just configure "*.doc" in the mask. (If you would like to include more extensions, please separate the formats with semi-colons).

     2) The File Exclusion Mask specifies the files that you need to exclude. Wildcards are supported and separate multiple masks with semi-colon(*.temp;*.tmp;*.bak).

     With this mask, you can configure to exclude according to file extensions, such as .temp, .tmp, .bak and so on. As a result, all files with the same extensions will not be backed up to the destination location.

     For example, you would like to only exclude .temp files in the selected source folders. You can just configure "*.temp" in the mask. (If you would like to include more extensions, please separate the formats with semi-colons).

     3) The Folder Exclusion Mask specifies the folders that you need to exclude. Wildcards are supported and separate multiple masks with a semi-colon (A;B).

     With this mask, you can configure to exclude folders with the same name. Therefore, all folders with the same name will not be backed up to the destination location.

     For example, you would like to only exclude folder "A" in the selected source folders. You can just configure "A" in the mask. (If you would like to include more folder names, please separate the names with semi-colons).

Please check the 3 filter example settings below:

4. You can also tick the bottom three boxes as you need. After the "Filter settings" option is set, please click "OK".

5. Select the location as the destination path to store the image file. If available, select a destination storage medium that is different from the source medium which contains the original files to ensure that you can restore your files/folders if your source storage medium cannot be used anymore.

6. Finally, click the Start Backup button and wait for the process to complete.

Tips:

• While a backup is running, you can click an icon in the lower-left corner to set to Shut down/Restart/Hibernate/Sleep PC after backup completion. Please tick the box and then click "OK".

• When the backup is running, you can also click the underlined sentence to check the backup process in detail.

Then please kindly wait for the backup process to complete and then click the "Finish" button.

As a result, you can check there is a backup image (.afi) generated in the destination location.

For more detailed info about how File Backup works, please refer to How to Do Files and Folders Backup.

Notes: 

• If you would like to restore a file backup image, please use the feature "File Restore".
• If you would like to view the contents of file backup without restoring a backup image, you can use the feature "Explore Image" to mount the image.
• For more advanced options of the current backup task, please refer to Backup Options, Schedule Backup and Backup Scheme.

• In order to avoid backing up temporary files, garbage files, and other useless data, we suggest you perform data clean up first and back up later.

• Backupper can back up NTFS files along with their security permissions automatically, and also supports restoring each file's security permissions together with the file.

• Some files may be in use by other programs exclusively, the program will prompt to skip them if this is the case.

• Some files don't have system permission (you can check permissions under properties of files/folders), the program will prompt to skip them if this is the case.

• If there are many backup sources that need to be backed up, please put them in one folder. After that, selecting that folder to back up will backup all subfolders therein.

• Files and folders in the Recycle Bin cannot be backed up.

• AOMEI Backupper can effectively back up files like NTFS compressed files or EFS encrypted files but the files will no longer have NTFS properties after restoration.

Conclusion:

By doing file backups, we can better protect our data and can better avoid losses due to data loss or corruption.

 

FAQs:

Q: Why Outlook OST and PST files are not being backed up?

A: Normally, you can use AOMEI Backupper to backup PST and OST files with File/System/Partition/Disk Backup. For file backup, you can either select the Outlook folder or separately select OST and PST files to backup. 

But OST files can only be backed up when Outlook is loaded, while PST files can be backed up no matter Outlook is loaded or not. Neither OST or PST files can be backed up when these files are occupied.