Time machine not backing up home directory

AvDe wrote:

. . .

I have now found out, that Time Machine is not backing up my home directory, although the whole HDD on which the Home folder is located, is set up to be included in the backup.

Are you sure? When you select the HDD, then Enter Time Machine, do you see it? Is anything from the HDD being backed-up?

After further investigating, I saw, that the Time Machine still thinks the Home Directory is still on the system drive (SSD) and is backing up an empty folder.

Unless it's specificallly excluded, Time Machine will back up anything on the SSD, including an empty folder.

Rats. 😟

Does a different user account, on the HD, get backed-up properly? (If you don't have one, create one for test purposes).

I'm curious if you could edit the time machine preferences file (Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plst) and add the folder path to the list of included paths. You can also check this file to ensure the path is not listed in any of the "skippaths" or "excludedpaths" listings.

Not a good idea to mess with that file directly, and it won't help.

AvDe wrote:

Yes the whole second HDD on which the home directory is stored is backing up, except the home directory.

One other question: what is the name of the folder, at the top level of the HDD, containing the user folder?

It won't hurt at all to add a new entry to an existing array, though whether or not these entries specifically would affect the behavior in question is unknown. I'd recommend he give it a try, and if it does not show any difference then he can revert the changes (copying the file beforehand to use as a backup to restore from would be beneficial).

Topher Kessler wrote:

It won't hurt at all to add a new entry to an existing array,

If done properly, probably not. But not knowing how experienced the user is, or how that modification will be done, it's possible to damage the file.

whether or not these entries specifically would affect the behavior in question is unknown.

No, it won't matter.

That probably wasn't necessary; I just wanted to check, as there are a few hidden, system folders Time Machine specifically ignores.

They're named home, dev, and net, so if you put a top-level folder on an external HD with that name, Time Machine will exclude it.

What I'm afraid of is, a few folks have had some sort of damage to their home folders, or sub-folders within it, that either prevented it from being backed-up, or caused it to be backed-up in full every time. There doesn't seem to be any way to determine that, except by process of elimination.

That's why I'm asking you to test with a different user's home folder, etc., to try to pin it down.

Ah, great! 🙂

(I should have thought to mention that earlier, though 😊).

Anyhow, glad it's sorted out!