Time machine: any way to eliminate listing a disk as a potential Time Machine target?

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Level 1

4 points

Time machine: any way to eliminate listing a disk as a potential Time Machine target?

Hi,

I have an external drive partitioned into two partitions, we'll say "ExternalData" and "ExternalTimeMachine". Due to the fact that I backup to the network at one location and to this external drive at another, I have to go in and manually pick the drive in "Open Time Machine Preferences | Select Disk..."

I never want to backup to ExternalData, so I'd like a way to tell Time Machine that that's not a valid target, and therefore only present me with "ExternalTimeMachine". Is this possible? I once saw a file on another system called ".com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent" and made a zero-length file of that name in the root of "ExternalData" and made it owned root:admin, but the ExternalData disk still shows up as a valid choice in Time Machine.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Aug 19, 2011 7:12 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Aug 19, 2011 12:58 PM in response to rkcarter

Hi, not certain, but see if this helps...

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080114082057330

An anonymous submitter sent this in as a hint; I'm listing it here as an alternative to this hint:

This has to do with Time Machine and presenting the dialogue when a suitable drive is mounted.If a file name ".com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent" is in the root directory of the Hard Drive, then it seems to disable the dialogue.

One issue seems to be that to make this file appear, you have to first connect the drive, which will generate the warning dialog ... and if you say "no," then this value is set anyway (so it won't be asked again for that drive).

Well, nope, I give up here after a couple of hours trying the above & more! 😟

But then I've never liked TM, I use...

carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...

http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Or SuperDuper...

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/

Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...

http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

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