Time Machine is the built-in backup tool in MacOS X 10.5. It takes a snapshot of files that have changed (by default it does this once an hour) and copies them to a sparse image on a USB, FireWire, or network volume (this typically requires an Apple Time Capsule drive or a MacOS X 10.5 machine sharing a drive - with a bit of hacking about it can be made to work with cheaper NAS configurations).
Unfortunately Time Machine tends to be a bit aggressive in backing up data that, frankly, I don't think it needs to back up. Why do I care about the OS files? Why do I care about the iTunes Genious database? Why do I care about the Thunderbird IMAP cache database? In order to reduce the snapshot footprints and extend the lifespan of the snapshots of data I care about I've built this exclusion list:
- ~/Music/iTunes/Album Artwork (166.9 MB)
- /Volumes/Closed (100.2 MB) - This is where I've configured FireFox and Opera to store their caches
- ~/Downloads (14.4 GB) - If I care about anything that ends up in this folder then I'll move it elsewhere
- ~/Library/Application Support/iScrobbler (34.2 MB)
- ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library Genius.itdb (44.4 MB)
- ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music (1.0 GB) -- This is my rip-to directory, not where my library actually lives
- ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications (48.6 MB)
- ~/Movies (7.6 GB) -- This is a holding directory for movies I take on the road. My NAS server holds the large repository
- ~/Music/iTunes/Previous iTunes Libraries (130.0 MB)
- ~/.thunderbird/{profile}/ImapMail (700 MB) -- Thunderbird's IMAP caches
- /System/ (19.5 GB) -- Be sure to check the "All system files and applications" box
- ~/Virtual Machines/ (10.1 GB) -- VMWare virtual machine disk images
By making these exclusions my average backup snapshot has gone from nearly 1GB of data I don't care about with EACH snapshot to ~35MB of data (25MB of which I only kinda care about, Firefox's "places.sql" database).
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