Tweaking Time Machine
With the recent release of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, Apple handed us what many believe to be the most innovative new application to hit the Mac in years: Time Machine.
But even with its’ dripping core animation goodness, and Apple’s boastful pride in this amazing new iteration in the backup application world, there runs the problem of excessive disk space being used.
When you hear the words, “backs up your entire system hourly”, your first thought is, amazing. Your second thought is, “how big of a hard drive will I need for that to occur?” Well there are a few things you can tweak within Time Machine to ensure that the data you care about is being backed up. You can also be assured that you aren’t wasting precious hard drive space on things you may find out later in this article, you really don’t care about or want archived.
It goes without saying that only a small slice of the Mac users pie backup their data, let alone regularly. Certainly none of us backup our precious data hourly, and even if you do, you would most likely be lying if you were to say you backed up all of your system files as well. But in all honesty, do you really need your entire system to be backed up hourly? I have comprised a list of what I deem to be completely unnecessary data to be backed up by most of us.
To inform Time Machine that you would like a certain directory exempt from backups, including the ones I will be discussing below simply select the options tab inside the Time Machine preferences pane and browse to the directories of your choosing.
The List
The Desktop
For me the desktop is a temporary shelf where files in the works go. Bits and pieces of an image project, a website I want to view later, or PDFs that came along with a software install all end up on the desktop for me. Possibly useful for the day or so, but after which I really could care less about ever seeing them again.
For others the desktop is a haven for important project files or possibly permanent storage for their documents (*Editor: see my desktop below for proof).
To those people I would say not only are you most likely a former Windows user, but you should also have the desktop backed up along with your other data. If you go this route then I would suggest an “in the works” folder to be on your desktop that is exempt from Time Machine backups until the final file is complete. This allows for Time Machine to only make one version of the completed file, instead of multiple instances of a file in progress.
Downloads
Apple has included a very handy downloads folder amongst your other home directories in Leopard and by default has Safari and Mail save downloads and attachments to this directory, which can be easily found living in the dock. I literally have GBs and GBs of data go through this folder every day, especially coming from Safari. If I were to allow Time Machine to back up this directory hourly it could literally add up to 7GBs of extra archiving a day – completely useless. Most of these files are large install disk images, video files, etc that either get deleted or moved to a more appropriate final home on my hard drive.
iDisk: Not much to say here except, why? Your iDisk is already backed up on Apple’s servers so this is a huge waste of space. The iDisk IS a backup disk all the time. Unless you are the type who wants extra piece of mind, and you don’t want to rely on Apple’s servers to keep your data safe, then skip the iDisk backup folks.
Mail: Saving Mail attachments, however could be of some importance. I often times will delete an e-mail that contained a document from a client and decide later that I either forgot to save it on my hard drive or needed a past version of the file. So for this I have Mail download attachments to a separate directory inside my home folder, ensuring that these downloads are safely backed up, without also having the massive Safari downloads tag along also.
Some other storage folders inside of mail that definitely don’t need to be backed up are the Spam and Trash folders. Even if you are the “hot-button” type who often sends email to the trash only to realize you need it later, you can always restore to the point in which it was present in your Inbox. Each time I check my mail, and my Inbox is full of new messages I tell Time Machine to back up instantly (by right clicking on the dock icon and selecting “back up now”) to ensure that every message has at least one point in time that it was backed up.
Applications
The applications folder was one of the first directories that really confused me as far as backing up is concerned. If the application came with the Mac, then that is easy enough to recover. Other applications such as iWork ‘08 and Adobe CS3 can be reinstalled by inserting the software disc and the rest can be downloaded off the Internet., just as they were originally.
Why on earth would I want to be able to restore an application in any other way? I already have my preferences being backed up inside of my Library folder, but I definitely do no want the actual application install to be backed up. Not only does this mean an application is never truly installed, but there would definitely be permissions issues should I choose to restore an application in this way. An application may pose security threats as well, and I would definitely want assurance knowing it was truly uninstalled, with no traces left behind.
Temp Files
For those of you who are creative professionals I would also recommend disabling Final Cut Studio capture scratch and temporary file directories. In a single Final Cut Pro project I can have literally 40GBs worth of video, a weeks worth of which can really add up. If the captured content is really important, and you don’t want to have to recapture the material then back it up yourself once to a separate location for safe keeping.
Although not quite as drastic, Adobe Creative Suite’s temp folders can grow above several hundred MBs in size for a single workspace, and most likely are unneeded for long term storage, definitely not for Time Machine’s purposes anyways.
The list can go on and on, insignificant directories such as the xCode documentation, system caches, etc can all be added to this list. I have come up with a good list to start with, but will continue to realize more and more things I really don’t need to have backed up.
In Conclusion
All in all Time Machine is a great backup solution for trivial things that we often don’t take into account. A single deleted photo or a piece of mail from weeks ago that we may worry is gone forever, can now be restored in an instant. Apple makes note of being able to back up the entire system, but often there are things we really do not want to have included in that list.
No matter how large of an external hard drive you are using for your Time Machine backup, it will eventually be full. These tips just extend that time a little longer, allowing you the most use out of this wonderful new feature in Leopard.
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This will be nice once Time Machine works…
TM is working steller for me backing up to an eSATA drive. Good tips all around, I might add that moving your iTunes folder to your external drive was a great space saver for me. To do this:
move /Users/~username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music
…to your external drive.
in iTunes go: > Advanced > Consolidate Library
…this takes some time while it copies over your entire music library and podcasts, art etc.
Don’t forget to delete the contents of your old iTunes Music folder to save some space.
MAKE IT BOOTABLE!!!
I’m going to keep my Superduper backup of my Tiger system just in case anyway, but please, oh please make TimeMachine create Bootable backups.
I like the peace of mind knowing that if my HD fails I can reboot into my backup and find myself at the same state I was in last backup and can continue where I left off.
Would you consider posting a list of directories to exclude from time machine, with the full location string? Good post, but I’m having a hard time locating all the folders you’re referring to
Oli: I certainly will work on an article for the directories I listed.
“This allows for Time Machine to only make one version of the completed file, instead of multiple instances of a file in progress.”
Isn’t it beneficial to back up your work as you go? If you lose your work right before you finish and you don’t have a backup, you’ll have to start over. I don’t get your point here.
I also think you should clarify that TM doesn’t backup every file on your system every hour. It backs up what files have CHANGED. That’s a huge difference.
Time Machine is working well for me.
Joe: He meant that it would be smarter to have only one backup of a file you’ll never modify again, but as you said, Apple already took care of that.
As to your question of why back up applications, the answer is easy. Literally. It makes full restores about as easy as you can get. About the only thing easier would be to just boot off of a SuperDuper clone drive.
If I had my way, I’d have a TimeMachine share on my NAS and would simply use the Leopard version of SuperDuper (when it comes out) to perform a full image of my entire machine once a week with a daily Smart Update.
I am very interested in knowing how to disable TimeMachine for individual mail folders, though. My Junk folder doesn’t need to be backed up constantly. If I needed to restore my machine, that’s some data that I know I wouldn’t miss.
[...] Tweaking Time Machine | MacApper time machine tweak (tags: Leopard mac howto backup macosx osx timemachine) [...]
What happens when your Time Machine destination drive gets full? I haven’t really seen anything about this.
I was thinking a Drobo would work for that (drobo.com), since it allows you to easily add drives for storage expansion.
What is everyone else using for a destination drive? Cheapest they can find? Something that was laying around?
– Jim
For the vast majority of users, including many users who frequent this website, the default setup of Time Machine is absolutely fine, no need to follow these steps and remove certain folders, just make sure your Time Machine drive is as big or larger than your internal startup disk.
I guess I’m just confused as to why you would be looking to “save space” with your backup drive? It’s a backup drive. If you are using the same external drive for multiple purposes than just a backup drive, than I would suggest partitioning into two partitions and limiting how much space you are willing to give Time Machine, say exactly as large as your internal startup disk that you are trying to backup.
When your Time Machine drive gets full, it removes the oldest backup, by default it’s set to warn you when old backups are deleted, but I’ve yet to see what that warning looks like.
I recently restored did the Restore System from Time Machine backup feature that is found in the Utilities menu of your Leopard DVD, and it was very impressive, I upgraded my Mac Pro to a new 400GB internal startup disk, and used my Time Machine backup to get that new drive up and running with all my stuff, exactly the way I like it, with all my apps installed and all the shareware is registered. It’s comforting to know that even if the Mac Pro dies tonight, I’ve got the Time Machine backup, I can restore that onto any Mac capable of running Leopard.
The reason for excluding folders is simple. To maximize the amount of space you have available so you can extend the amount of time it backs up before deleting old backups. You wouldn’t make it a habit to backup temp files and cache and every single change made to a video file. That just doesn’t make sense. Most people want to get the most out of this feature…this is how.
Can anyone confirm that it is possible to exclude the /Applications folder and still be assured that if one has to use the “Restore from Time Machine backup†option when reinstalling OSX, that the Restore will work?
I have excluded this folder, for the same reasons in this post, but I want to be sure that if I ever have to “Restore from Time Machine” on a totally wiped computer, that all my data can be restored.
You can exclude any drive or folder you desire. You can’t add the iDisk to that list, so I gather TM already, by default, does >not
[...] My biggest issue with Time Machine is the way it backs up everything by default. It’s easy to change although a bit confusing at first.It’s also easy to delete certain parts of old backups or [...]
I’m sorry but I don’t get it… If TM backs up hourly all my files that changed in the last hour why are all my files / folders that I kept on my desktop and e.g. that I deleted not findable and restoreable in the time line?
I tried it again and again, but everytime I just can’t find them…
Maybe you can help me solving this problem?
Thanks!
[...] assuming you’re using Time Machine to do the backups? Link Link You might also want to change the time schedule and how often you make the backups. Try [...]