Can't exclude folders from Time Machine backups

I am trying to exclude Folders from backups to preserve space.
Go into Time Machine preferences and Options - I can select + to Exclude Folders, and select a Folder, but on then selecting to Exclude nothing gets returned to the "Exclude these items from backups" form.
Help!

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

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HT201250 How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

TS1211 I lost one calendar from my Mac Osx 10.5.8 system on G4 how can I find it from time machine backup?

I lost one calendar from my Mac Osx 10.5.8 system on G4 how can I find it from time machine backup?
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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5176639

Can't restore folders from Time Machine after Lion

Hello guys,
after upgrading to Lion 10.7.1 I can't seem able to restore some old folders from Time Machine
Here's what happens: I log in TM, I can scroll through my old backups, I can choose the folders I want to restore, I can click on the folder, but when the systems tries to restore it, it stops saying that I don't have the privileges to access file A in the folder (and then all the procedure is stopped).
Oddly (at least for me) if I try to restore just that same file A (and not the whole folder) that I should have no privileges for, from the same old backup, I can do it, but I have to give the system my password: It pops up a window saying something "Finder is willing to make some modification, can you authorize?" (forgive i'm translating the alert from another language) and then I can restore it.
Has anybody else this problem and how can be solved?
Many thanks
Ps: I did a simple upgrade on Lion, no partition, no blank disk, and never changed anything in my user preferences, it's always the same, administrator
Pps: Before Lion I could restore easily exactly the same folders and files I tried to restore with Lion

wrongusername wrote:
But if I transfer everything with the Setup Assistant, won't I once again be experiencing the problems I had?
If the problems were caused by your data. But that's extremely unlikely. It may have been an app, or, much more likely from your description, something corrupted in the Leopard OS. That's one of the problems with upgrading a sick system without knowing what or where the causes are. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself: if he isn't in tip-top shape to start with, his condition is likely to change, and not for the better.
Most of us would have recommended first simply doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your internal HD; if that didn't help, installing the "combo" Leopard update; if that didn't work, doing an +Archive and Install+ and re-installing the "combo."
After a clean re-install of Snow Leopard, my Mac worked fine again (except for the TM trouble). So it probably had something to do with my old files.
Probably not. Much more likely OSX was somehow damaged. And you got a whole new one.
How come I could read the files on my external HD and yet not be able to copy the files?
Time Machine uses special "deny everybody everything" permissions on it's backups, among other things, in an attempt to keep us mere mortals from moving, changing, or deleting things and corrupting them.

Exclude Movies from Time Machine backups

Is there a way to exclude iTunes movies from Time Machine backups? The "Movies" folder is visible and can be selected, but the "exclude" button grayed-out. I ask this question because I add TV shows and movies to iTunes really just for a short term, maybe a day or two, until I can watch them using AirPlay on my TV, and then they're deleted. For example, four 1-hour TV episodes equals about 20GB of mp4 files, and it's a waste of Time Capsule space to back them up. I can exclude individual movie files, but I need to exclude the entire folder because the file names are always changing.
Is there a terminal command I might be able to enter to exclude the "Movies" folder? Thanks in advance.

Exposing the /Home/Library/ Folder
Pick one of the following methods:
A. This method will make the folder visible permanently. Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder and paste the following at the command prompt:
chflags nohidden ~/Library
Press RETURN.
B. Click on the Desktop, press the OPTION (⌥) button, select Library from the Finder's Go menu.
C. Select Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu. Paste the following in the path field:
~/Library
Press the Go button.

Why are excluded folders in Time Machine Backups?

I have my top-level Virtual Machines folder excluded from Time Machine Backups. Yet, they are there, granted, only back to the top of this month, 4 days ago, but, there they are.
Why is this?

No, it has been in the exclusion list since June 2013 when I got the AirPort Time Capsule. (and even before that, when I got VirtualBox)

I can not restore folders from time machine

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See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

Can't recover iMac from Time Machine backup

Hi there
I need your help! My photos, music, videos, and other data is gone.. Especially the photos i would like to have back, they were stored in my Aperture library (about 13.000 pictures).
For a few days ago my iMac (with Mountain Lion) wouldn't start, just showed the white screen with the 'thinking-circle' - no further… But I wasn't worried , because I had a Time Machine backup. So I restarted, holding down the option key. Then I chose to restore from the backup i had made. It started, but there wasn't going much time before it stopped, said there was an error with the backup.… When it started up again, tried again it said the same. So from there I couldn't boot the iMac, and i couldn't restore it with the Time Machine backup.
Then I made an fresh install of the OSX Mountain Lion on an other external hdd (from my Macbook Pro). I connected the external hdd to the iMac and booted from there. And then in the disk utility i could see the original hdd in the iMac. It sais - Capacity: 999,35 GB - Used: 733,3 MB. So it almost just erased/formatted… The backup hdd's capacity is: 2 TB - Used: 566 GB
Then I took my Macbook Pro and connected the backup hdd (2 TB) to it. But it didn't show me any hdd in the Finder. I opened the disk utility and there it was! The hdd showing as the other one i had connected. But the partition is grayed out. So I guess it was right that there is an error on the hdd. So i selected the hdd and pressed 'Repair disk'. It completed and said it was ok. Then i selected the partition and pressed 'Repair disk'. It took very much longer time (1-2 hours), and then it told me that it wasn't able to repair. 'Mac OS X can't repair the disk "GlennovitS 2TB". You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can.'
But anyway the partition now was showing with black text, and therefore I could see it in the Finder. And opening it in the Finder showed me one folder: 'Backups.backupdb'. I can open that, and see whats in the folders (it is just VERY slow opening. Can hear the hdd working but it takes so long time to actually see the results.). So i can see the different dates from my backups, open and see whats backuped. And i can look through the folders and find the folder where my Aperture library is stored, and its there! So i copied it and tried to paste it to my other external hdd. But it wouldn't. It showed me the error: 'The Finder can't complete the operation because some data can't be read or written (Error code -36).'
I have googlet a lot, and tried a lot now. Both the hdd's is Mac OS (Journaled) format. There is space enough on the other hdd. I have tried using the 'dot_clean' operation in Terminal, to the library and to the folder that its located in, and then try copying again - still no success. Also tried to copy through Terminal with some 'sudo cp…' . Also I tried to remove the file-extension from the library (.aplibrary) so it should become an ordinary folder, but in the info of the file, the field with name is grayed out, can't edit in there. Also tried to compres the library or the folder its in, to a ZIP file, but it can't do that either. Tried to use a program called 'JFileRecovery' but didn't work either. Then I connected it to a Windows 7 pc, but it can't see the hdd at all.. I have also tried to connect the backup hdd to the iMac (booted from the clean installed external hdd) instead of the Macbook Pro, but it makes no difference.
If you need info about my setup it is:
iMac 27" 3,1 GHz - i5 - 12 GB ram - 1 TB hdd
Time Machine Backup drive: WD external - 2 TB
Second external: iomega 1 TB
Extra boot hdd (with the clean Mountain Lion install) : iomega 250 GB
Macbook Pro 15" - 2,53 GHz core2duo - 4 GB ram - 250 GB hdd
Aperture file size: 163,29 GB
My iTunes library was about 2.000 songs and 100 videos + app's + podcast… (haven't tried copying that yet, only the images because they are my main issue…)
If you have read all this, thank you for that. Hope you see my frustration and hopefully have some ideas of what to do?.. Recover from the original hdd - recover backup hdd - or fix the files / copy them from the corrupted backup somehow? Please help...
From Glenn :-)

If there is any chance of recovery at all your best bet is Prosoft Data Rescue 3 . There is a free trial to see if it can recover what you need. But don't do another process on that drive until you've downloaded and run it.
That means that ideally you should use another bootable drive to download and run Data Rescue. Or booted from another Mac in firewire mode. Also, there is always the option of ordering or going to the store to purchase the DVD. Then running from the optical drive.

Cannot restore some files/folders from Time Machine Backup

When I try and restore files or folders from my Pictures folder, which is a sub folder of my user I get the message "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access xxxx". As far as I can tell this has only just started to happen because I've recovered stuff from the folder since I bought the machine in July. Yesterday I deleted an old Time Machine backup folder from the Time Machine disc. This caused empty trash to go berserk - the "files to delete" count went negative and I had to stop/restart the empty trash command about 20 times before it sorted itself out. Maybe this has screwed some permissions somewhere? I have run disc utility and repaied permissions on my hard drive and verified the TM drive. Still no joy. The permissions for Pictures look OK. Anyone any ideas?

Yesterday I deleted an old Time Machine backup folder from the Time Machine disc. This caused empty trash to go berserk - the "files to delete" count went negative
Probably you corrupted your Time Machine Backup by manually deleting older backups- that is dangerous.
See Pondni's advice on how to fix it - Time Machine trouble Shooting
I hope that helps
Léonie

Can't restore files from Time machine backup?

I kinda successfully restored my files from Time Machine after a clean re-install of Snow Leopard (Time Machine thought they were new files, though, so backed up the 26 GB... waste of space), but now I'm trying to restore the files of the other user on the computer. In her pictures folder, I can't copy the iPhoto Library because I don't have permission to access it! The same problem occurred on my account too, but I was able to go to my Time Machine drive and manually change the permissions for the files I wanted, which doesn't work on her account.
I have made a Youtube video of the error:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__PdyAetVg
Can anyone assist me in restoring the files? That's all I need help in. Thanks

wrongusername wrote:
But if I transfer everything with the Setup Assistant, won't I once again be experiencing the problems I had?
If the problems were caused by your data. But that's extremely unlikely. It may have been an app, or, much more likely from your description, something corrupted in the Leopard OS. That's one of the problems with upgrading a sick system without knowing what or where the causes are. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself: if he isn't in tip-top shape to start with, his condition is likely to change, and not for the better.
Most of us would have recommended first simply doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your internal HD; if that didn't help, installing the "combo" Leopard update; if that didn't work, doing an +Archive and Install+ and re-installing the "combo."
After a clean re-install of Snow Leopard, my Mac worked fine again (except for the TM trouble). So it probably had something to do with my old files.
Probably not. Much more likely OSX was somehow damaged. And you got a whole new one.
How come I could read the files on my external HD and yet not be able to copy the files?
Time Machine uses special "deny everybody everything" permissions on it's backups, among other things, in an attempt to keep us mere mortals from moving, changing, or deleting things and corrupting them.

Creating a script to exclude files from Time Machine Backup

Hi guys,
I was looking for some input as I have rolled out Sophos Safeguard to a number of MacBook's in our company and with this you need to exclude sevral files from the Time Machine backup.
Rather than manually doing each user is there a scripting tool I could use to exclude these files? Have taken a look at apple script but don't think this supports the time machine application. Could the terminal be used? If so does anyone have any guidelines I could follow to create this?
Thanks for your time.

The exclusions are contained in the file
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
I suggest you deploy that file rather than trying to edit it, which could be quite complex.

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Can't exclude folders from Time Machine backups

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