Comments on: Time Machine Exclusions

By: Festool Routers

Festool Routers — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:49:14 +0000

Well, life was never easy. You have only driven in the point further.

By: Aurelio Jargas

Aurelio Jargas — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:03:46 +0000

Here on Snow Leopard, I see that the User Paths Excluded changed a bit:

Library/Application Support/SyncServices/data.version
Library/Caches
Library/Logs
Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Library/Mail/AvailableFeeds
Library/Mirrors
Library/PubSub/Database
Library/PubSub/Downloads
Library/PubSub/Feeds
Library/Safari/Icons.db
Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db
Library/Safari/HistoryIndex.sk

By: Gus

Gus — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:29:49 +0000

I have read a few postings and articles regarding Time Machine exclusions, and I have not been able to figure out what has gone wrong since my upgrade to 10.6. If anyone happens upon this post and has some input, I would greatly appreciate it.

To avoid hassles with FileVault, I don’t use it. Instead, at login I mount an encrypted disk image that I use to hold all client data and I do not store the password in my keychain.

Under Leopard, Time Machine would backup the files inside this mounted volume just like any other drive/volume. I could exclude the folder where the disk image itself was stored (though backing up a sparse image could partially address this under Snow Leopard) so as not to have massive backups, and I could rely on Time Machine to make backups of the individual files, revisions, etc. inside the volume.

Under Snow Leopard, Time Machine seems to not even try to backup the contents of the mounted volume. I cannot quite figure out why or how this is excluded. Maybe I am doing something else wrong that I am not detecting. I did, for a variety of reasons (e.g., CrashPlan, etc.), make a new encrypted volume using a sparse image but I don’t see how that would cause the problem.

How does Time Machine know to backup external drive volumes that are mounted and yet not to backup volumes that are mounted from a disk image?

Any thoughts? Thanks very much.

By: TC

TC — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:19:23 +0000

In regards to NewInfo’s comment about Apple’s changes to the exclusions list. This change seems to have occurred in 10.6, so if you are running 10.5.x the initial listing is still valid.

By: Lisa Peet

Lisa Peet — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:23:08 +0000

Thanks for sharing

By: Furniture Indonesia

Furniture Indonesia — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:44:47 +0000

-good info indeed!

By: NewInfo

NewInfo — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:06:24 +0000

I know this is two and a half years after this was posted, but it seems to get referenced several places. For those wondering, at some point Apple got enough complaints to fix the problems listed here.

First, they’ve removed the following from “Contents Excluded”
/private/var/log
/private/var/log/apache2
/private/var/log/cups
/private/var/log/fax
/private/var/log/ppp
/private/var/log/sa
/private/var/log/samba
/private/var/log/uucp
/private/var/spool

And they’ve created a fourth category in the list:

FileContentsExcluded
– paths where we need to capture entire subtree folder layout to restore disk structure, but don’t want to backup contained files

/private/var/log
/private/var/spool/cups
/private/var/spool/fax
/private/var/spool/uucp

By: PLC programming

PLC programming — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:28:31 +0000

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By: colonies

colonies — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:35:19 +0000

thanks to the autor

By: WiseMax

WiseMax — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:00:52 +0000

To wendi:

First of all, why do that?…

Hardware is different… I suggest you leave the OSX alone, don’t restore any of it.

Better yet, restore only personal files and applications (no need to restore all of them). This might be safer and faster, I guess…

To All:

I’m so sorry I didn’t read befor about the excluded iTunes files… Could save me some worries, we’ll see.

I’m at the moment restoring my 320 GB HD in my 15″ MacBook Pro that became too small to a new 500 HD. Well, it started about 4+ hours ago and is still at 33% – it still says it will be more 7 hours to go :-( it looks like 8 or 9 are possible, a total of 11-12 hours for 230 GB of system and data load… Really, not very fast…. but what matters is that it works. Will come back here to tell the rest of the story tomorrow, LOL!…

Regards,
WiseMax