Selective Time Machine backup

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Level 2

306 points

Selective Time Machine backup

I have all my iTunes media on an internal hard disk in my Mac Pro, separate from the OS/boot disk. I want to include only the Music media in the Time Machine backup and I was hoping for suggestions on how to do this most effectively.

By default, TM will backup that entire HD with all the Movies etc and the huge size will simply fill the Time Capsule when I don't actually need to backup the Movies. But I DO want the music securely backed up.

Easy right? In TM Prefs simply select all those folders on that HD I don't want to get backed up. Ah, but the problem is that those 'other' folders might change and every time I add something else in there, I have to go to TM Prefs again and edit the exclusions list. That's the trouble, it's an exclusions list with no opportunity to also specify 'inclusions'. There needs to be additional control with e.g. '+' and '-' operators to include or exclude files and folders. But TM has no such flexibility. So...

Can anyone suggest how to arrange for TM to backup only a single folder within a hard disk.

I can't use symlinks as TM doesn't follow them and other tricks using special 'mount' options would likely be ignored by TM (even if usable in MacOS). The only solution that comes to mind would be to make hard links to the folders I want to backup and keep everything else in a single folder that wouldn't change and be easy to exclude. Of course the trouble is that hard links to directories/folders are not allowed. Except in MacOS in fact, ironically provided specifically for use by TM and unfortunately not available as a general user command.

So, the only solution I think would work is essentially impossible to implement and I cannot think of any alternative. Can anyone suggest how to do this. Tell TM to backup just 1 folder within an entire hard disk.

Any ideas?

Posted on Mar 1, 2018 4:52 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 2, 2018 1:27 PM in response to UKenGB

Apple do things and their user base learns to live with it.. or not.. you can request a feature.. you can also bash your head against a brick wall.. the effect is roughly the same.

The simplicity of Time Machine is great.. for the standard end user who can manage an on button ..

Unfortunately TM also is now unreliable to a point where even the mainline apple publishers have noticed.

/article/

After the latest

I have to wipe out all your backup history because it is now corrupt.. and useless.. and I am even doing you a favour showing you this dialogue.. it happened again 2months after this with no warning at all.. not even a mention it stopped backing up for several days until I actually had to go looking.

CCC is a front end to rsync.. and simply works well and reliably.. some backups are better than none.

The guy who was the expert on TM died a few years ago.. he studied it deeply.. James Pond.. we miss his helpful KB.

You can still access his site which is offline via cache sites. It maybe too old to be helpful though.

http://www.baligu.com/pondini/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

148,453 points

Mar 1, 2018 12:43 PM in response to UKenGB

You may want to consider using a third-party backup solution for your iTunes Media folder, like Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), to perform the incremental backups for this folder instead of using Time Machine. CCC offers much greater control on choosing what you want to back up.

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Answer 3

Mar 1, 2018 3:30 PM in response to Tesserax

+1 to Tesserax suggestion of CCC. (we have no financial interest.. I pay for the license as any other user. )

In fact you might like to consider using CCC instead of Time Machine period.

On most recent OS.. basically Sierra and later.. TM is really unreliable to Network targets.. as well as being pretty much locked up to do exactly what Apple thinks it should do.. not what end user wants it to do.

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Answer 4

UKenGB Author

Level 2

306 points

Mar 2, 2018 1:12 AM in response to UKenGB

Yes, I have considered third party solutions, but I don't really want to have to run anything else. I sporadically use rsync to just copy the iTunes media I want to secure to another HD, but in terms of simplicity of setup and actual usage, you can't beat Time Machine. However its simplicity comes largely from not having many configuration options. But once set up and running, I find I can basically forget it, until I need to recover something and its interface for doing that is second to none.

As with so many things, I appreciate the simplicity Apple is trying to provide, but that often is achieved at the expense of control. In this case, a little more control (i.e. 'inclusions' as well as 'exclusions') would be welcome. I'm sure it could be provided in a way that could be ignored by those who just need the simplicity.

I thought long and hard about hard-linking the directories I want to backup, but there are risks and in the end I have simply entered everything on that HD that I want to exclude and just have to remember to add another exclusion for any other folder that I add there.

I'm still thinking about aliases though. TM does follow those if added to the exclusions list. Would it be possible to exclude a folder, yet NOT exclude an alias to a folder inside that excluded folder. Would it then back up that aliased folder? Or would it simply see it as being in the exclude zone, or would it simply copy the alias file itself? Anyone tried this?

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Selective Time Machine backup

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