Backing Up Single File On Single Drive With Time Machine

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

I've got Time Machine backing up my main drive but due to lack of storage space on it, I've had to move my Photos Library to one of the other internal drives on my Mac mini (180GB library).

Any way to set Time Machine to backup just the Photos Library file on that drive, rather than the other 2TB of stuff it contains?

 

[BrianBaughn]

In System Preferences>Time Machine>Options exclude the folders containing everything else on that drive. Simple way would be to put everything else in a folder at the root level of the drive and exclude that folder.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

In System Preferences>Time Machine>Options exclude the folders containing everything else on that drive. Simple way would be to put everything else in a folder at the root level of the drive and exclude that folder.

I considered doing that. Only issue is that I then need to exclude anything added to the root director of the drive every time something new is added.

I was just curious if there were any other solutions. Thanks!

 

[BrianBaughn]

For adding new items to the excluded list automatically I suppose you could create, with Automator, a folder action for the drive that runs a script with a Terminal command to put items copied to the drive on the list.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

For adding new items to the excluded list automatically I suppose you could create, with Automator, a folder action for the drive that runs a script with a Terminal command to put items copied to the drive on the list.

Interesting idea. Might be a good way to go. Exempt the Photo Library and have it automatically add any files added to the list. I like it.

 

[Partron22]

SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner might be a better way to go than Time Machine for this purpose/
With SuperDuper!, and probably(?) CCC you can schedule daily, weekly etc backups of whatever folders you choose to wherever you choose. They don't give you a prolonged history trail like Time Machine. One back is what you get, but I find multi backups of pics to be overkill for my uses.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner might be a better way to go than Time Machine for this purpose/
With SuperDuper!, and probably(?) CCC you can schedule daily, weekly etc backups of whatever folders you choose to wherever you choose. They don't give you a prolonged history trail like Time Machine. One back is what you get, but I find multi backups of pics to be overkill for my uses.

Neither of these products see libraries as a collection of files (which they are). Instead they see it as a single file. Because of this they would backup the entire thing each time, rather than just the changes. That means re-copying over 100GB each time rather than just the few MB of added files. Not overly optimal from an efficiency standpoint.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Neither of these products see libraries as a collection of files (which they are). Instead they see it as a single file."

Have you actually TRIED this, to see what happens?