Introducing CA ARCserve Backup Agents and Options › Using Agents › Agent for Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service › Performing Backups › Backup Options › Writers and Components Options

Writers and Components Options

The Writers and Components options let you specify how you want CA ARCserve Backup to treat Writers and Components. These global options affect all Writers except for those with Writer-specific options in place. For information about setting Writer-specific options, see Set Writer Options.

• Files included by a Writer will be excluded from file system backups: Select this option to prevent files that belong to a Component from being backed up by a traditional file system backup. This option offers the following advantages:
  • Avoids backing up files that have already been backed up by VSS.
  • Ensures that fewer files are processed and traditional backups take less time to complete by excluding files from traditional backups.
  • Helps achieve successful backups by eliminating problems associated with files that must be processed as a group (for example, files associated with a Writer or database application). In a traditional backup, there is no mechanism to ensure that the files are processed together.
• Files excluded by a Writer will be excluded from file system backups: Select this option to prevent files that have been excluded from being backed up by a Component from being backed up by a traditional file system backup. This option excludes files associated with an application that should never be backed up (the Windows page file, for example) from any file system backups. Each Writer is aware if its associated application maintains such files. This option enables CA ARCserve Backup to use this information when performing traditional backups.
• If a Component file fails to back up the Writer backup will terminate: Select this option to cancel the backup of a Writer if the backup of any of its Components fails. Component backups fail if one or more of its files cannot be successfully backed up. This option ensures that the backup is consistent and that all of the files associated with a Writer are backed up before the backup is considered successful, regardless of how many Components are associated with the Writer.