Hi thanks for the info there.
Have done some tests to see how it works and it works but not as good as I had hoped.
My test was as follows:
pagefiles on vm's are configured as independent disks and persistent
include datastores with independent disks left unticked
only datastore luns not containing independent disks selected ie not pagefile luns
no spanned datastores advised so nothing to select or disable there
c:\ = os
d:\ = apps
e:\ = pagefile
result = no snapshot of pagefile volumes, can do a restore BUT and this could be annoying, the missing 3rd hard drive (e:\) ends up referencing the c:\ drive vmdk file
This can catch you out if not careful as if you delete the drive and select delete files from disk, you will lose your c:\ partition.
My process for restoring now is do a full restore and wait for it to finish.
Remove the snapshot info.
Remove the pagefile drive and add it back in.
Go into windows and into the virtual settings and reapply the pagefile sizes and reboot.
Shut down image (not needed if got storage vmotion)
Migrate image onto different datastore and select thin provisioning
Move back to correct datastore ensurign it keeps the thin provisioning.
Reason for this is when the image is restored back, it restores it as a thick disk instead of thin disk. This is a pain as it takes a long time to restore.
Looking at the vmfs datastores, i can happily see that no snapshots exist in them luns.
I mistakenly clicked helped instead of answered, sorry about that
