Design Pitstop

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Most users of OS X Leopard are familiar with Time Machine, the comprehensive backup utility that makes keeping your critical files safe as easy as flipping a switch. When I first got my Mac, I decided the 300GB hard drive from my old computer would make a perfect Time Machine drive. Little did I know how quickly TM would chew through its space (about 2.5 months, if you’re wondering). It didn’t take long for me to decide “you know what? I don’t need to backup EVERYTHING.”


There are a number of reasons you might choose not to back up every single folder on your mac, but the root cause for walking down this path is usually space. For example, if your computer suffers a catastrophic failure, you don’t NEED to have all of your system files backed up- they already exist on your OS X install disc, which you’ll need to insert to get up and running anyway. It should be noted that this will prevent you from easily installing from a backup, but really- you should be fine (for the most part) just copying over your home folder.
To tell Time Machine not to backup certain folders, you just go to System Preferences, Time Machine (Under System) and click “Options”. This will give you a screen that says “Do not back up:”. Simply click the + sign at the bottom, and choose which folders not to backup. Here’s my list:

• /Applications ~20 GB (Varies greatly from system to system) - Do you really need to backup all of your applications? Chances are, you still have the original installation media or can easily download it again.
• /Library/Audio - ~360 MB - Do you need to backup the audio files that make OS X run? You can easily pull these off of the installation media.
• /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches - ~440MB (Varies) - I highly doubt you’ll ever need to recover your temporary files in the event of a system meltdown, so nuke em.
• Parallels or Fusion Virtual Drives - 3.0GB - ???? - Depending on the size of your VM installation and other factors (did you set the drive size to static or dynamic?) these files can range from somewhat large to simply MASSIVE. What’s worse, because they are constantly changing, Time Machine will probably be making a separate instance of this file for every hour you run windows/linux. The directory to ignore for Parallels is ~/Documents/Parallels/<Insert OS Installation Name Here>. (If anyone knows where Fusion keeps its disk images, please let me know in the comments!) Yeah, Time Machine won’t backup your Windows installation, but you’re better served backing it up separately anyway (if at all. I only run Windows as a testing environment for web design anymore).
• ~/.Trash and /.Trashes - Varies Greatly - Do you really need to backup your trash? Nuke it. NOTE: These are hidden files, and you must first allow finder to show hidden files. To do this, open up your terminal and type:
  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

  followed by:

  sudo killall Finder

  When you are done hiding these files, simply type:

  defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
• ~/Music/iTunes - Varies Greatly - This is your iTunes music. Whether you want to remove it from backups or not is up to you. I choose to avoid backing it up simply because I figure it’s backed up on my iPod, and I can easily rip it from there with various iPod ripping tools. What are the chances of both my hard drive and my iPod dying at the same time? About as high as adding Time Machine into that mix. I haven’t verified yet, but I’ve heard rumors that even changing your iTunes meta data (artist, song title, album, rating, play count) will cause TM to make a completely new backup of the file- I’m skeptical of this, but if someone can either confirm or deny, you’d bring some peace of mind!

That’s it for the folders I choose not to backup. I’ve saved myself about 40 GB on Time Machine, and I’d assume that should get me a few more months without getting a second one.

What about you? What folders do you hide from Time Machine?

Sphere: Related Content

Tags: apple, leopard, os x, time machine

If you found this article useful and use StumbleUpon, please give it a thumbs up so more people can read it! Thank you!

Please take the time to check out this thread and leave a comment letting me know what you would like to see from this site. It's still relatively young and trying to find its way- you can make design pitstop the resource you always wanted!