How to Backup a VM and Exclude a Hard Disk

[IronSheepdog]

It's pretty much a simple question, but I doubt the answer will be simple. I hope it will be anyway. So, I have a Windows 10 VM and I have a second hard disk attached for storage for the Windows 10 VM. I'm running Blue Iris on the main (boot) disk of the Windows 10 VM and saving all of the videos to a second disk (the second attached hard disk). When I backup (a snapshot) the VM, I just want to backup the Windows 10 VM itself. I do not want to backup the contents of the second hard disk. However, when a backup is performed it always wants to backup the second hard disk as well. That a ton of security video footage that I'm not concerned about.

Is there any way to backup a VM and have Proxmox exclude the contents of an attached drive?

The only other workaround would be to turn the second drive into a network location and save the video files that way. However, I prefer not to do that.

 

[Matthias.]

In the GUI, edit the disk, tick the "advanced" checkbox. There is a checkbox saying "Backup".

 

[IronSheepdog]

In the GUI, edit the disk, tick the "advanced" checkbox. There is a checkbox saying "Backup".

Thanks! I never knew about that. Simple enough.

 

[alamoudi.moh]

In the GUI, edit the disk, tick the "advanced" checkbox. There is a checkbox saying "Backup".

thanks for your support, that is the backup part, how about if i want to restore that backup, but every time i do that it remove the attached drives (which is how it is supposed to be done)

how can i restore the backup but keep the attached drives instead of re-mounting them manually everytime ( i have around 26TB)

 

[Dunuin]

A backup restore works by not overwriting stuff but fully wiping the whole guest with all virtual disks and then it creates a new guest from scratch based on your backups data. If you exclude a disk from backups the backup won't contain it, so the new guest will also miss it. Its even worse if you exclude a disk from backups that isn't using disk passthrough. In that case a restore will detele the excluded virtual disk where you got no backup of.

 

[Neobin]

Its even worse if you exclude a disk from backups that isn't using disk passthrough. In that case a restore will detele the excluded virtual disk where you got no backup of.

In my humble opinion an absolute no-go.

For reference :
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/feature-request-advanced-restore-options-in-gui.109707

 

[alamoudi.moh]

thanks for your support, that is the backup part, how about if i want to restore that backup, but every time i do that it remove the attached drives (which is how it is supposed to be done)

how can i restore the backup but keep the attached drives instead of re-mounting them manually everytime ( i have around 26TB)

Dear this shouldn't be the case.

First, the configuration of what drives are attached to VMs are not stored in the guest OS, So Basically for me it is a bug, i backed up the VM with drives attached to it but excluding its inside data from be backed up


>> Basically like windows in a hard drive with 20 partitions where win is installed in drive C, formatting it doesn't format you entire drive list and ignore the fact the are dive d, e, etc and say no no it was not backed up
(with due respect to win and its fan, even windows does it).


As for losing the data, i REALLY don't mind it is just media data, don't jump to conclusions