This looks as if you have forgotten the '+' to apply the directive. Your directive should read like this:

<< / >>
   +skip: name_of_directory

If this does not help, please state your directive.

For test I have c:\temp e:\temp and f:\temp

here's my directive applied to the client

<< / >>
+skip: temp

This doesn't skip any temp folder on any drives

Found this explanation on the web...

But doesn't work..

SPECIAL CHARACTERS:
======================

To include all files, the following syntax examples are acceptable:

*
.
*.?*
*.*

The '/' path when applied to a Unix system would mean the root
directory. 

i.e. << / >>

However when the same symbol is applied to a Windows system is would
mean any partition and/or directory.

i.e. << / >> (this is the ONLY time that double quotes " " are not
needed in specifying a directory in a Windows system)

For Example: if all occurances of the Temp directory needs to be skipped
(no matter how often or where it appears), the following directive would
be used:

<< / >>
+skip: Temp

This is what I have used for verification:

NW Server: 19.5.0.1 on Windows 2019

Save Sets: D:\ & Y:\ containing these directories:

C:\>tree D:\
Folder PATH listing for volume DATA
Volume serial number is B2D1-8210
D:\
├───BEST
└───TEST

C:\>
C:\>tree Y:\
Folder PATH listing for volume INDEX
Volume serial number is E8D3-8EA9
Y:\
└───FEST
    ├───BEST
    └───TEST

C:\>

Directive:

<< / >>
+skip: TEST

As mentioned, this works perfectly for me - both directories TEST will be skipped as expected:

I just forgot to state that the Backup of E: corresponds to an earlier backup.

Thanks for the tests! That is exaclty what i'm trying to acheive! But it seems that I cannot get that behavior on my clients.  I'm off for the week-end, so i'll try to do more tests monday and post the result. Maybe, i'm hitting some kind of bug or missing some configuration on the client. I'll let ypu know the results. Thanks

Well same as before...

Directive is on the client...

Directive containing :

<< / >>
+skip: temp

Data still get backed up....

What could be doing this behavior... any ideas ?

You should not be surprised - in the save set list you explicitly told NW to backup these directories. As a consequence, NW will not use the so called "file system walker" to find the directories and apply the directives.

Please change the save set list appropriately. May I also suggest that you just have one entry per line.

Regards

Thanks for the reply bingo.1.

I was actually testing this option and got it to work if i specify the root drive and use << / >> for the path in the directive.

So I specify the root drive  E:\ or F:\ as the saveset for the client, the directives get honored and folder get skipped as supposed to!

The Weird thing, is that now that it has been working with the root drive... If I change the savesets for e:\temp and f:\temp (root drive removed) and use the same directive with << / >>. The folder can now be skipped... This was what was wrong for the first attempts. Looks like the "File System Walker" is still activated.

If your intention is to skip windows temp directories only, as far as I can recollect there is also a Windows standard directive, isn't there, that would skip these. So tpu should be able to ccompare things with already available directives. It is very sensitive with white space.

Depending on the used NW version, since nw18 or was it 19, there is the possibility to use wildcards for filesystem paths. Something that really should have been there also for years. Hence one had to create a lot of entries in a directive, if one wanted to skip files/dirs on specific filesystems with a strict naming convention.

The option to use / for a windows system was a peculiar workaround later on, it applying to any filesystem.

But really regular expression for both path and underlying files or dirs was dearly missed, to be able to use directives as a really powerful feature.