Unsupported Data Types

  • Article

Published : April 8, 2005 | Updated : August 17, 2005

DPM does not support protection of data types listed in this section. If a protected data source contains an unsupported data type, DPM continues to protect the supported data types in the affected data source, but does not protect the unsupported data.

If DPM detects any of the following unsupported data types in a protected data source, the affected data is not protected, and an alert is displayed in DPM Administrator Console:

  • Encrypted files, and unencrypted files within encrypted folders

  • Hard links

  • Reparse points, including DFS links, Single Instance Store (SIS) files, and junction points

    Important

    A protection group can contain data with mount points. When mount points are included in a protection group, DPM protects the mounted volume that is the target of the mount point, but does not protect the mount point metadata. When you recover data that contains mount points, you must manually recreate your mount point hierarchy. DPM does not support protection of mounted volumes within mounted volumes.

  • Files within the same folder that have names that differ only in case

    DPM protects only volumes formatted with NTFS. In most cases, NTFS prevents users and applications from creating files with names that differ only in case (such as “foo,” “fOo,” and “Foo”) within the same folder. However, applications running on UNIX, applications using the Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX (POSIX), and some low-level Windows applications that use NTFS APIs can create files that differ only in case.

    When files with names that differ only in case exist in the same folder, DPM protects only the “default” file. Changes to the non-default files are ignored. Because, for purposes of data protection, the default file cannot be reliably predicted, do not depend on DPM to protect any of these files.

If DPM detects any of the following unsupported data types in a protected data source, the affected data is not protected, but an alert is not displayed in DPM Administrator Console:

  • Recycle Bin

  • Paging files

  • System Volume Information folder

  • Volumes that are not formatted with NTFS

To avoid any misunderstanding about which files will be available for recovery, you may want to advise your users to avoid creating files of the unsupported data types in the data sources that are being protected by DPM.