Can I select only a few specific folders to back up with Time Machine?

Question

Can I backup only specific folders with Time Machine?

If there is not an "official" way to do this, does somebody know a trick to do so?

Answer 1

You may exclude items from a Time Machine backup as follows:

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Click Time Machine.
3. After having enabled Time Machine and chosen a backup disk, click Options.
4. Click + to specify an item that is not to be backed up. The backup disk is included on this list automatically so that it does not back up itself.

Answer 2

Easily - no. Time Machine's selection only uses exclusion so you'd have to exclude everything but the folders you want. I'd recommend looking at a different solution instead (eg. rsync, Retrospect, or other backup software)

Answer 3

Select All the files and folders in the disc that contains the folder you want to back up.

Drop them all on the Exclusions window

Remove the folder you want backed up from the exclusions

Answer 4

tmutil enables you to edit the exclusion list from the command line.
Because blacklisting folders one by one can be tedious, I wrote deus_ex_tmachina bash script that basically iterate over the folders at the root of your disk and exclude them ; stopping in the middle of the process so you can edit the list.

Answer 5

I'm not sure if time machine follows symbolic links, but if so, you could have a high level directory full of links to the directories you want backed-up, then exclude all the top level directories except that one....slightly roundabout, but not too work intensive (if time machine backs up the content of symbolic links, which I slightly doubt, but should be checked....)

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I checked. It does not work. Other ideas?

Answer 6

In my case I have items on an external drive that I want to have backed-up. What I do is create a partition on that drive and then remove that partition from the exclusion list.

Answer 7

I answered this elsewhere as well, sorry for the redundancy but this question is asked multiples times on this site alone. Time Machine (And excluding files) is not a good solution.

Short answer... "Get Backup 3" from the Mac Apps Store.

I'm looking for the same solution, (Or was). Basically I want to back up just one folder multiple times a day to a flash drive, similar to the way Time Machine does. BETTER YET! (Million $ idea here...) I would like a local cloud, i.e. I make a change, it updates my local backup on my flash drive to be in sync right then and there when I make the change (Like drop box does). The closest thing I have found is "Get Backup 3" on the Mac App store. You can choose an Origin folder and a destination folder and set it to synchronize the two. You can choose the direction as well which is great, : Folder A to Folder B, or Folder B to Folder A, or even Bi-Directional updates. You can also schedule sync times. I set mine up for close to the end of the day. It backs up and I leave my thumb drive at work in case my laptop ever gets stolen at least I have a copy of my files backed up (Network here is very restrictive and painfully slow).

Hope that helps.