The present invention relates generally to backups and more specifically to virtual machine (VM) backups including file exclusion. Aspects of the present invention related to using a specialized buffer to identify a file for exclusion. In embodiments, a file system used by the VM can be used to search for the specialized buffer. In embodiments, when the specialized buffer is located, offsets are noted related to the file associated with the specialized buffer. In embodiments, the offsets are used to zero out blocks associated with the offsets. Thus, the file can be effectively excluded from the backup.