How does one create a custom backup image?

Hello everyone. Recently I browsed my system backup by mounting the VHD in the disk management snap-in. The image had my entire World of Warcraft installation and a ton of other non essential files. I wound up just deleting those files from the backup and thought I would clean up the missing links and registry after restore. This seems like a very dirty way of making a "bare-essentials" backup.

So, I'd like to make another system backup, but want to selectively exclude things, like certain installed programs, so that my system files, configuration and customizations remain, but none of the fluff. I need to do this for the sake of minimizing used space on my backup drive and there seems to be no such options in the "backup and Restore" panel that I can see to accomplish this. Is this possible with the native backup utility or must I use some 3rd party program? Thanks in advance

System backup is typically on an all or none basis---all of a partition or none of it. The chaff with the wheat. You can omit certain partitions, but not portions of partitions.

I've heard of some advanced tools that will allow some selectivity, but I think they may be cloning tools rather than imaging/backup tools. Maybe a Paragon application? Somebody else may remember the details.

Maybe you can put your "non-essential" stuff somewhere other than C and then just backup C and System Reserved?