Time Machine Oddity

[ricede]

I have always excluded certain files from the backups. Over the last few days, i have excluded certain files in system prefs, but even though TM puts them in the exclude list - it refuses to exclude them during a backup. Normally with this sort of anomaly - i would wipe the drive & start afresh. However i have been working on a Website these last few days and there are many files that i need to keep access to in the backups.

Can anyone suggest a way to get TM to remember to exclude certain files. Is there a pref file or database, that has maybe got corrupted & if so - will deleting it muck up the existing backups ?

I know that i can go into TM & delete these files, unfortunately it will just back them up again on the next update.

[chabig]

There is a good site with TM troubleshooting tips. Try this: http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html

[ricede]

Thank you so much - thats answered my question on how to do it.

[ricede]

I'm back again with the same problem. It was solved for a while & has now reiterated itself. I used chabis's link & followed it to the letter.

This morning i noticed that my Time Machine backups were oversize, for the stuff that i was backing up. I re-did the instructions on the link and still it refused to understand the concept of 'Exclude'.

So i decided to do a clean backup & wiped the TM drive ( trashing the TM pref file first ). That worked fine. Later i did another backup, excluding a 7gb file and lo & behold - TM has backed up that file.

This is not an enormous problem but very annoying all the same. I know i can go back into TM & remove these files, however it is a waste of time. I suppose i could do an archive & install but it seems a lot of work for such a small problem.

Has anyone else had a similar problem & found a simpler way around it ?

[chabig]

Instead of excluding individual files, try excluding folders.

[ricede]

Yes ive tried that - doesn't seem to make any difference

[chabig]

It's probably time to dig deeper. Are these excluded files in your user directory or are they system files. Are you excluding them from a user account or a system account?

Will you provide more detail please? How about a screen shot of the TM preferences?

Do you have any third-party system hacks or extensions installed?

[ricede]

They are all in my user folder , thats where im excluding them from . They tend to be large files like movies which i don't need to backup. Nothing from the system. No third-party system hacks or extensions as far as i know.

[chabig]

It all looks legit to me. As an experiment, would you try excluding the ~/Movies/ folder itself and deleting the exclusions within?

[ricede]

The only problem with doing that is that i have quite a few sub folders in the 'Movies' folder which I DO wish to back up.

Thinking back on this problem ( something i hadn't realised before ) - it has always had to do with exclusions in the movies folder. All other folders have 'excluded' fine. Maybe i should create a 2nd movie fielder 'Movies 2' or something & use that to store stuff i wish to exclude. That might work.

Still seems a bit of a run around - i should prefer for TM to ' Just Work ' !!

[chabig]

It looks like you've only got two movies excluded from backup: Death at a Funderal, and Horizon - The Transit of Venus. Everything else is going to be backed up.

Is that what you expect?

[ricede]

For some reason those 2 movies DID exclude. There was another 11 gbs of stuff that wouldn't exclude so i moved them earlier onto an exterior HD.

I have just set up a movies 2 folder in my home & moved all the stuff i want to exclude into that. Ran TM & it worked file. Everything was excluded.

So it seems to be a problem with the original 'movies' folder. It apparently confuses TM. I would love to know why. Could it be a Finder problem ? Some corruption maybe which is causing TM to get confused ?

[chabig]

Quote: Originally Posted by ricede For some reason those 2 movies DID exclude.

They excluded because they were in the list of exclusions.

Quote: Originally Posted by ricede There was another 11 gbs of stuff that wouldn't exclude...

Those didn't exclude because they are not on the exclusions list.

Quote: Originally Posted by ricede I have just set up a movies 2 folder in my home & moved all the stuff i want to exclude into that. Ran TM & it worked file. Everything was excluded.

As it should be, assuming you added the folder to the exclusions list.

Quote: Originally Posted by ricede So it seems to be a problem with the original 'movies' folder. It apparently confuses TM. I would love to know why. Could it be a Finder problem ? Some corruption maybe which is causing TM to get confused ?

I still don't see a problem. It sounds to me as though everything was always working. You haven't shown me anything to suggest otherwise. For example, we never saw the structure of the folders in your ~/Movies/ folder.

If you don't want an extra folder in your home folder, you can put your "Movies 2" folder inside ~/Movies and instead of "Movies 2" why not name it "Movies (not backed up)" or some other meaningful name?

[ricede]

Sorry i wasn't clear.

When the 11 gb of stuff was in the TM prefs as excluded - they DIDNT exclude . So i removed them & put them on an external HD.
That was before i first posted.

Yes i did add 'movies 2' to the TM prefs to exclude. It worked fine.

i think thats a great idea to put movies 2 into the 'movies' folder. Should have thought of that myself.

Heres a screenshot of the movies folder. The files & folders that i was trying to exclude were in various of the different sub folders.
They weren't just in one sub folder.

[chabig]

I see. Well it should just work. Here's what I do:

I keep my movies on an external drive, so they are not backup up by Time Machine. Now I do want them to be backed up, so I have a second external drive and once per day, SuperDuper clones the media drive to it's backup drive.

[ricede]

Thanks for your time & thoughts. Much appreciated.