Time Machine Feature Request: Rules to exclude Folders/Files

Hi.
I think its important to have rules for excluding folders/files from tm-backup in the next version of OS X (Snow Leopard).
Example: "Do not backup Folders/files which name begins with a specified character + location is "desktop".
So i have a better control of which files are in the backup. For example temporary big files on my desktop.
Best regards, Andre

Well, it's really no secret, macmatic , and the page I linked above derives from this one that contains many more feedback page links:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Can I use my 2TB WD My Book Essential for the Time Machine feature on the MacBook as well as two other Windows computers (one running 7 and one with Vista)?

Can I use my 2TB WD My Book Essential for the Time Machine feature on the MacBook as well as to store information from two other Windows computers (one running 7 and one with Vista)?

Yes you can but you need to partition the drive into at least 2 separate drives.
To do that you need to use a Windows PC to do the first partitioning. Say you split the drive into two partitions each 1TB (or close to 1TB) each.
Partition fand format both partitions on a Win PC as one NTFS and the other FAT32.
Then move it to the Mac and Reformat the FAT32 partition Mac Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Table.
I have that same drive and that is what I did originally with it. I now have it just for the Mac as I have other externals for the Win systems.
Good Luck.

I am running Lion 10.7.2 and I have an external drive hooked to my time machine. I can't rename folders and when trying, I get an error code 8076. The checkbox "ignore permissions for this device" does not show on volume info. Help please???

I am running Lion 10.7.2 and I have an external drive hooked to my time machine. I can't rename folders and when trying, I get an error code 8076. The checkbox "ignore permissions for this device" does not show on volume info. Help please???

The TIme Machine volume does not have that checkbox.
I think the issue is with your Finder...
Go to Finder "Go" menu hold the option key and choose Library. Then go to Preferences trash these files:
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
Then, restart, or log out and in again.
(You will have to reset a few finder prefs the way you like them.)

Time machine feature on Macbook

Hi there -
I have a question about the Time Machine feature on my Macbook. I want to back up my materials, especially my iTunes files, but I'm not sure if my Time Machine feature will work without an external hard drive. Can I start the Time Machine feature and back up my files on my Macbook hard drive? Or do I need to save it to an external hard drive?
Not sure how to go about backing up my stuff with this.
Thanks!

Backing up to your own hard drive makes no sense. If your drive fails you have no backup. You should backup to an external Firewire drive. You can use Time Machine or other software.
Basic Backup
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
8. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
9. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete FireWire drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

HOW CAN I USE TIME MACHINE TO BACKUP ONLY PART OF MY FILES ON EXTERNAL D?

Hi, I am using time machine to back up all my files at the moment. but I want to get rid of video and photo material from my laptop and keep it on the external hard drive to which the time machine backs up my stuff.
how can i do this without losing the video and photo files permamnently?
thank a lot!

nefsi wrote:
doesn't time machine back up my files on the External hard disk?
By default, Time Machine backs-up almost everything on your internal HD to your External HD. It can also back up things on an external HD, if you want it to.
What I would like is, to find a way so that I could back up everything, but not have all the videos and photos I do not use often, on my laptop. instead I want to put them on the external hard drive and have time machine update all the other files.
Yes, you can do that, but there are two considerations:
You should partition the external HD so the TM backups are in one partition, and the other files are in the other partition. A partition (also called a volume), is treated like a separate disk for most purposes. See #3 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
You should find another way to back-up the videos and photos in that other partition, such as archiving them to CDs/DVDs.
In other words, can Time machine back up only some of my files?
Yes. You can exclude things from Time Machine. See #10 in the FAQ Tip. If you partition your TM drive, the other partition on it should be excluded automatically; but if it isn't, you can easily add it to the +Do not back up+ list in TM Preferences > Options.
For detailed instructions on making another partition on your external HD, see #6 in the FAQ Tip. It shows how to add a TM partition to a drive that already has other data on it, but the procedure is the same.

I migrated info from a hard drive to a new mac under time machine. It says I have shared files, but I don't see the old info on the new machine. Where do I look for it ? How do I make the old backup the base for my new macbook ?

I migrated info from a hard drive to a new mac under time machine. It says I have shared files, but I don't see the old info on the new machine. Where do I look for it ? How do I make the old backup the basis for my new macbook ?
The old OS was Mac X 10.5.8. I think the new one is 10.7.2 Lion.

Have a read here How do I set up a new Mac from an old one, its backups, or a PC?
Stefan

Hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files'

hi, I have a macbook pro with a new hard drive installed and restored. My WD external drive backup on time machine now wont let me access the files. I get a prompt saying 'you do not have permission to access the files' After my new drive was installed I plugged in time machine and it started backing up. I paused it when I realised that it was running for more than a few minutes. I now realise that it probably started backing up the new hard drive all over again. Which makes me think that the original back up must be on the WD back I cant seem to access it. Any ideas would be helpful.

See E-10 in the first link.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

IMac 7,1. Snow Leopard. 2 printers that printed nothing, or more than ±1/4 from page top. Reinstalled OS. Time Machine BU now allows only latest (faulty) files. ±4 series shown, each taking +8 hours to complete. How to reinstall from 'DEVICES' in 'iMac'?

iMac 7,1. SnowLeopard. 2 printers that printed nothing, or more than ±1/4 from page top.Reinstalled OS. Time Machine BU now allows only latest (faulty) files. ±4series shown, each taking +8 hours to complete. How to reinstall from ‘DEVICES’in ‘iMac’?

You need to get rid of MacKeeper (Zeobit). Do not use their uninstaller, follow the instructions here ...
http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/
When that is done there does not appear to be a lot wrong if you correct the red ink entries.
The 4Gb is sufficient for Yosemite though 6 or 8 Gb would be better. You may find the download slow so be prepared.

HT1553 i am upgrading my 2008 macbook to an ssd drive and want to save my settings. how do i save then? I have my files backed up with time machine ,but dont want to restore all files ,as there might be some junk backed up too. Help will be appretiated

i am upgrading my 2008 macbook to an ssd drive and want to save my settings. how do i save then? I have my files backed up with time machine ,but dont want to restore all files ,as there might be some junk backed up too. Help will be appretiated

When you restore from a Time Machine back up you can pick and chose what is restored. It is not an all or nothing process. Nor do you have to do the partial restores all at the same time. If days after the first partial restore you find something else you want you can restore just that.

While searching in Time Machine, I'm seeing double of the files

While I do searches in time machine the finder shows two of every file it finds. It only does this for the month of December. Is it saving two of every file or is this just a glitch? I recently did an erase and install of Leopard and I think that could be a possible cause.

If you make an alias in OS X, it points to one item. In TM, it uses multiple pointers to the original. Get rid of one alias, and the rest still work. That's how it should be working.

I'd like Time Machine to backup my personal account's files separately from my guest account's files. Both have big files. What's the best way to do this? Should I connect 2 external HD to my new iMac, one for each account?

I'd like Time Machine to backup my personal account's files separately from my guest account's files. Both have big files. What's the best way to do this? Should I connect 2 external HD to my new iMac, one for each account?

NeuroBrain wrote:
Since my new external hard drive is have a lot of space, I'm thinking of splitting it for Time Machine and external storage.
This is a common mistake and I highly advise against it.
1: TimeMachine saves states of changes and thus requires more room on the TM drive than the boot drive it's backing up.
2: Something happens to the TM drive, loss, theft, dropped, power surge, etc., you lose both backups.
3: The storage drive might become a portable need, with it being on the TM drive, now your increasing the risk to the TM backup that something could happen to it along with the storage drive, due to increased movement.
Seriously, have a read,
Most commonly used backup methods
it's ASC User Tip that saves us regulars all the trouble of having to repeat ourselves over and over again in the posts, because we tend to forget things too, or not here sometimes etc.
"Plan for the worst and the good will take care of itself" - Donald Trump

Time machine not completely backing up certain folders

Has anyone run into a problem with their Time Machine continually neglecting to backup one or two of their folders? I know some people have problems with TM not backing up items on their desktop, but my desktop data is fine. There are just two folders (as far as I know) that TM refuses to back up (unless there are new items, then it will backup only those items). One is my 'documents' folder. And another folder I created called 'OS media'.
About my setup:
I recently set up Time Machine with my Macbook Pro (running Mavericks). TM is backing up the internal SSD along with an external hard drive that is always attached via USB. The drive they are being backed up onto is a Western Digital My Book Live via wifi--which I know is not advised as it is not officially approved by Apple, but I'm hoping that's not the cause of this particular problem. Because otherwise the MBL has been working pretty well.
More details:
Both of the problem folders happen to be from the external hard drive (not internal SSD), and in the first tier of folders. But the other folders on that tier (about five other folders) are fully entact in TM, so I don't think it's an issue with the external HD. And the missing files are not a certain file type, they are all the sub-folders and files under the problem folders.
I went into the Western Digital (Time Machine) drive itself via Finder and verified that the files are indeed missing, so it wasn't a lag issue. And I have nothing excluded from backups in TM preferences.
I noticed that within those two problem folders, if any file was modified or created within that folder since my initial TM full backup (about two weeks ago), even if it was just a modified .ds_store file, TM would begin to include that file in the backup. This make me guess the problem was something that happened during the initial TM backup. The folders were somehow missed, and subsequent TM incremental backups aren't able to detect that it's missing. So unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm just going to try to redo a full backup. I'm reluctant though, because it's going to take about two days to complete, and I really have no idea if it's even going to help.
And I don't know if this is related, but when I'm in Time Machine and I do a search for any of my files, I always get zero results.
Important sidenote:
While browsing my folders in Time Machine (Star Wars view), I found that clicking on an alias to a folder would open up that folder, but it didn't show the contents of the folder as they were in that particular backup version; instead, it showed the contents of that folder as they appeared in my computer currently. In other words, it appeared that I was looking at an old backup version of the folder, but it was actually the present time folder. This could easily mislead someone into thinking that their current data is backed up, when it is not.

oregonjoe wrote:
Am I to understand people should not post questions that involve any 3rd party products that are not officially supported by Apple?
No, but you must understand that Time Machine does not support the configuration you are using.
The exhaustive list of devices supported by Time Machine amounts to the following:
AirPort Time Capsule's built-in hard disk (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to a Time Capsule (any model)
External USB hard disk drive connected to an AirPort Extreme (current model only)
A hard disk drive directly connected either to the source Mac, or a Mac on your local network.
That is all.
Use whatever backup device you want, but you should be aware that this site is full of reports of misery from hapless individuals who had been using third party NAS devices for Time Machine backups, only to find that they were incomplete, corrupted, or useless in the dire circumstances in which they were required. Apple won't care if you lose your data while using a Time Machine configuration specifically excluded from their technical support documents.

Time Machine backup of iTunes didn't - folders are almost all empty.....

Posted this in the iTunes forum as that's what I'm trying to restore using Time Machine, but thought I'd try here too
Here's what happened....
Having a small hard drive on my old but current eMac and running out of room I decided to move my iTunes library to my external Lacie drive (with over 80 gb free)
I checked the Apple documents for what to do and was reminded to make a backup
I ran a last back up to Time Machine, which I have used a few times for document recovery and know that it works and how to use it, and then set up my new destination folder on the Lacie and deleted my iTunes library from its original location.
Now when I go into Time Machine, and no I didn't exclude anything from being being backed up, I can find the iTunes library, and the folders with each named artist, but every folder is empty, there are no music files. (Or rather there is one named 'Unknown Album' and a sub directory called 'Unknown Artist' which has a small selection of unamed audio)
Each iTunes Music folder is at about 800mb - the unnamed audio mentioned above
I have gone all the way back (though I have not opened every backup yet) to October 2007 when I did the first Time Machine backup on installing Leopard, and every backup I have explored has empty artist folders.
'Find' also seems to work only in a limited way with the TM files - a search for 'Music' for example should logically find every 'Music' folder back to the start of TM but doesn't even though I can find them manually in each backup
Does anyone have any ideas of where or whether there might be a full backup; even from October 2007 would be better than nothing! I 'only' had about 9gb of audio, though some is custom, one off work.
My basic assumption here is that the first TM backup would have backed up everything and then only alterations and additions as they occurred
Thanks so much in advance
Stephen

Death By Media and Kiraly
Thanks so much for the ideas and suggestions - no libraries were excluded, hmmm, and only one user account....
Do I have an iPod with the songs on it?
Well I can still see all the items I have lost in Music in iTunes (all of which come up with an exclamation mark and a 'can't find, do you want to locate the library' message...) so I know what went missing
I do have a 1st generation shuffle with some tracks on it, and some burnt CDs, and some Downloads which were saved by Time Machine
Of the 9GB or so about 6GB were from CDs or vinyl that I own so no huge deal - though the vinyl takes so much time doesn't it
1GB was almost everything by a favourite artist of which about 30% were rare recordings, live shows etc (*all legal downloads I must add*) which took lots of time to find, and convert etc
Then the recordings of conferences and presentations which are irreplaceable
Then there are the 250 or so purchased songs from iTunes which I really don't want to have to buy again.....
Any other ideas where at least the original archive created by Time Machine might be hiding...?
Thanks again
Stephen
Message was edited by: Mobilizing Mouse

I know, another Time Machine help request

I get the Time Machine back up error. I recently purchased a Seagate GoFlex Desk external drive. Time Machine seemed to recognize it right away. The following morning I found the dreaded "Time Machine could not complete the backup. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
I have formatted the external drive per Pondini's step by step; MAC OS Extended (Journaled). No luck. Then I downloaded Time Machine Buddy Widget. I don't know how to copy the error messages in the pop-up. Apparently it is having an issue with a movie that was downloaded from Itunes. I proceeded to exclude it (band-aid). However, I will run Time Machine again and it will have a problem with another file. The error code is consistent; Error (-36)
Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/TM Backups/Backups.backupsdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume
No pre-backup thinning needed 135.88 GB requested (including padding), 1.80 TB available
Your help will be greatly appreciated!

kenfromlo wrote:
I get the Time Machine back up error. I recently purchased a Seagate GoFlex Desk external drive. Time Machine seemed to recognize it right away. The following morning I found the dreaded "Time Machine could not complete the backup. Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
See #C10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting (but see the next item first).
I have formatted the external drive per Pondini's step by step; MAC OS Extended (Journaled).
Did you select the GUID Partition Map Scheme? If not, reformat it that way.
Then I downloaded Time Machine Buddy Widget. I don't know how to copy the error messages in the pop-up.
Click in the message area, select Cmd+A (to select All), then Cmd+C to copy.
(Or, if you mean the TM failure message, a screen print is fine.)
Apparently it is having an issue with a movie that was downloaded from Itunes. I proceeded to exclude it (band-aid). However, I will run Time Machine again and it will have a problem with another file. The error code is consistent; Error (-36)
See the pink box in #C3 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine not detecting changes in certain folders

I recently noticed that TM does not update its backup from certain folders any more.
I have a deep sub folder inside ~/Documents, and when I create new folders or files in it, they do not appear in the TM backup. The backup contains, however, lots of files created until Oct 2, 2013. Which means that TM used to backup the contents of this folder.
Now, before you suggest that I have probably disabled backup for this folder - nope:
When I check with tmutil isexcluded for paths of files that didn't get backed up, it says[Included].
When I then added another disk as a second backup destination, that backup does contain the missing files. This proves that the source is accessible and can be backed up. So, any suggestions that the path may contain invalid chars or is too long doesn't apply, either.
Somehow the existing backup got stuck, preventing it from updating these particular folder contents.
The system log does not show any messages related to this.
A disk verification with Disk Utility does not show errors, either.
I could just erase the entire backup and start over, but I would rather not lose my previous versions.
Any ideas how to possibly "reset" or fix the backup so that it backs up the missing files again? I suspect that there's some kind of database that TM maintains to be able to quickly browse its backup folders, and maybe that's corrupt somehow, but I cannot find one.
Here's another idea: If the source disk was modified without OS X watching over it (thru fsevents), e.g. by booting from another system, the TM detects this and starts a complete comparison again, right? I wonder if I can trigger that, and that this will fix the issue.
In the past I've seen knowledgeable people indicate that TM backups can get broken once the backiup gets full and needs deletion of old versions (this is the case here), but no one was able to explain what exactly goes wrong and whether this can be fixed. If you know more details, please comment. I just might write a tool for that in the end
(I am an advanced Mac user and programmer; I am using 10.9.3)

Open the Time Machine preference pane and unlock the settings, if necessary. Click the Options button. If there is one particular folder with items that are not being backed up reliably, add it to the list of excluded items. If there are many such folders, add your home folder to the list, or add a whole volume (i.e., what Apple calls a "disk.") Save the changes.
Start a backup, or wait for one to happen automatically. When it's done, open the preference pane again and remove the exclusion(s) you made earlier. Back up again and see whether there's a change.

Time Machine Feature Request: Rules to exclude Folders/Files

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