OS X Yosemite :: Can't Select Files To Exclude In Time Machine
Dec 4, 2014
I have recently upgraded to 10.10 (fresh install and only migrated network settings and documents). I was setting up my Time Machine and choosing which folders to exclude from the backup when suddenly when I clicked on the plus button to add another directory the finder window shows all the folders as greyed out and unable to be selected. This applies to ALL files on the hard drive. Screen shot attached. I have performed a repair permissions and still a problem. Also performed a repair on the disk to and no change. Needless to say I have performed a reboot as well.Â
Info:
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
What all gets excluded from a Time Machine backup when you specify 'Exclude All System Files' when selecting to exclude the 'System' folder?? Does this include all of the invisible unix folders? I don't see much reason to back that up since I can always reinstall from CD.
I just set up Time Machine, and in order to make my backups efficient, I'm trying to think what kind of stuff to exclude. I want a full, working backup, so that if I needed to I could have a complete, bootable restore in less than an hour. With that in mind, here's what I excluded so far:
1) My 2nd external hard drive. It's filled with videos and wouldn't fit anyway. I figure if that drive goes down I'll recover what I can from it and re-rip the rest.
2) My downloads folder. I just download so much crap here that I usually throw away instantly or else move. Plus the downloads folder usually has 2 copies of everything: compressed and uncompressed. Even worse, if the download is a .tar.gz, it has 3 copies of the file.
3) My VMWare images folder. Time machine will back this sucker up every hour that I'm using one of the virtual machines (due to the fact that the guest OS is storing virtual memory in the image file), which would completely kill my ability to go "back in time" since it would fill up my drive very quickly.
4) Anything that's already version controlled elsewhere. I have all my code in a subversion repository on another server, so I don't see a point in backing that up. The backup would just be cluttered anyway.
I just set up my external HDD today for use with Time Machine, thing is, I only have about 14GB of files on my Mac partition in my Macbook Pro, and about 53GB on a Bootcamp partition.
I excluded folders in options in the Time Machine system preferences and told me that the calculated backup is about 30 GB. Nevertheless, when the time machine starts is counts about 300GB. Therefore it is not excluding the marked folders.Â
It shows an example of excluding /system and /applications In the online documentation for time machine. I am also running Parallels, but am not using it much at the moment. Perhaps I should exclude Parallels, also
For some reason, my Macintosh HD has ended up on my list of items to exclude from backup (in the Options section of Time Machine preferences). I can't do the recommended thing of highlighting the HD and pressing the minus sign, because my HD is grayed out on the Exclude list and unable to be highlighted.
I am backing up my data from my mac book pro for a second time. I plug in my external, and it says it doesn't have enough memory to back up my computer. I have 1 TB hard drive and used about 650 MB for the first back-up. Obviously I don't have enough to back up everything for a second time. I just want to back up the new stuff. When I go to exclude the current external from the new back up, it's grayed out. Do I have to delete the contents of the hard drive and re-back up the entire computer?
Time Machine no longer works for me. Apparently the volume of stuff it wants to back up is too large for the partition devoted to it (on an external hard drive). But I can't choose the exclude anything because the Options button in Time Machine Prefs is greyed out. I've deleted the TimeMachine .plist file, and restarted, but no go. And I haven't found anything to help either here or on the larger web
Running 10.9.3 I have a 2 TB RAID I'm using for time Machine back up. When I enter Time Machine I can see the and move to the desktops, but nothing is selectable to restore.
I have a 21" iMac and a Mac Mini, both of which I upgraded to Maverick a week ago. Since then, I have not been able to get Time Machine to backup. I can connect to the disk through my network, but Time Machine does not recognize it exists. I have gone through User and Groups, I have checked everything I can think of through System Preferences, and nothing has worked, including Sharing. I have another computer and am able to backup it, after programming the mini.
Recently when booting Yosemite on my MacPro early 2009 I get a message "could not load time machine prepare" but I am able to open it. But when I try to connect to my Time Capsule I get a message, "there is a problem connecting to time capsule". My iMac and Macbook pro both connect to the same time capsule with no problem. It seems the time machine prefpane on the MacPro has been corrupted. What to do?
When I access time machine it shows the backup screens for all the dates but when I click on any one of them, that date comes up but I can't access any file or function on the screen. It either takes me back to the latest screen or scans back to the screen before the first backup (blank).
I'm using Outlook on my MBA and was wondering if there is anyway to exclude emails from the file types that Finer uses when looking at all of your files? Â
At the moment when I am looking for certain files I find myself having to scroll endlessly to get past the individual email messages/files that Finder throws up.Â
Info: iMac G5, Intel iMac, Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.7)
I have a Mac Book Air with Yosemite installed. I also have Time Machine backing up to a Time Capsule. Plus, two other Macs are backing up to the Time Capsule. The problem I am having is that the Mac Book Air backups are not working. It keeps say "Preparing Backup" then after a while it says "Stopped". I have tried deleting the "In Progress File" but this has not worked. The other backups on the other machines seem to be working fine.
Is there a way to modify the frequency of Time Machine backups without just turning it off for a period of time. I.E., can I tell TM to backup every 3 hours instead of every hour? Running Yosemite 10.10.1 on iMac (27-inch, Late 2013).
Info: iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
When I try to restore to an earlier time time machine gives message, 'time machine cannot be altered or deleted as it is being used by yosemite OS X. Â
I have a Mac Book Air that has been backing up to a Time Capsule. I do have other Macs backing up to the Time Capsule which work fine. For some reason it is saying the last backup was the 9th of November. I thought maybe this has something to do with the lack of space. So I have added another disk to the Time Machine and I am not sure whether it is backing up to this one as it is saying the "Backup is incomplete".
I just discovered that I am unable to restore mail since about the time I first installed Mavericks over a year ago. Prior to that time I can see the mail in time machine and recover a specific email. Since that time forward there is nothing shown to restore. I am now running Yosemite. I rebuilt my inbox to see and after completing that it still is not allowing me to see the any mail that was backed up. So I can restore any emails from prior to the end of September 2013, but it appears I have no backups of email since that time. This is disturbing. So much for relying on Time Machine for backups.
Since upgrading to Mac OS X Yosemite, when I open Time Machine on a folder, I can't navigate backwards in time anymore, on any folder. The arrows are grayed out. Usually, this is because Time Machine needs a bit of time to load older backups, but I have given it a few minutes to load and it still does not work.Â
Strangely enough, the only time that there is no problem is when I restart my Mac. Once I restart, then I open a folder and open Time Machine, then I can navigate backwards in time, almost immediately, too. But after that, no folder that I open in Time Machine in the future will allow me to move back in time, until I restart once again, then I am able to only navigate a single folder.Â
Things I have already tried:Â
- Repair Disk Permissions on Macintosh HD
- Repair Disk on Time Machine drive.
Info: Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), 2.3 GHz i7, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD
Just logged into my iMac and got the following error. Bit worried, what happens now? Have I lost all my TM history form the start of TM backing up? Is my TC on the way out?
How do you make the exclude file option on zip, or unzip, work for dotted files? For example, Â
zip -r foo ~/foo/ -x *.txtÂ
will zip all files in ~/foo/ that do not have the extension txt. But this doesn't work for "hidden" files, those that start with ".", like ".txt". So,Â
zip -r foo ~/foo/ -x /.txtÂ
still gets all the .txt files in foo zipped up, not excluded.Â
unzip foo -x /.txtÂ
has the same problem: it happily includes any .txt files in foo.zip in the unzipping
I am doing a backup prior to my first ever format & reinstall. Time Machine will not allow my use of this external hard drive that I had previously used for a Time Machine backup . Time Machine says, " The backup disk is not in Mac OS Extended ( journaled) Format, which is required." how do I change it to Extended (journaled) Format?
Yes the external hard drive in question is meant for Mac.
(Late 2009 Mackbook6,1 w/Yosemite 10.10.1)
Info: MacBook (13-inch Late 2009), OS X Yosemite (10.10), 1T SSHD
