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By default, does Time Machine make backups of VMs?

D

dschiller

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 7, 2007
138
0
Hi all,

I've just finished reinstalling Leopard on my iMac (long story), and I decided to use this opportunity to clean up my computer, so instead of letting the Migration Assistant copy everything over from my TM backup, I've decided to copy my important files manually.

Thing is though, I can't find my Parallels Virtual Machine image on the backup drive. I believe it's supposed to be in username/Documents/Parallels, but this folder is empty on my latest Time Machine backup.

Any ideas?

Best,
Daniel
 
I may be wrong, but I think Time Machines ignores certain file over a certain size unless you specifically ask it to back those up.
 
No it will backup them up! You want to exclude them because being a virutal hdd the size is always changing.

You will want to exclude it otherwise it's going to be backing up the file every time. if that file happens to be 20 gbs, then its going to be backing that file up every time because it is changing all the time and time machine does incremental backups
 
I was under the impression that Time Machine does NOT backup VM's - it completely ignores them........

Which is why Time Machine does not have a backup of yours..

Certainly the case with VMWare Fusion VM's...
 
Time Machine backs up my VMs (both Parallels and Fusion).

I hvae to delete them on a regular basis and ensure I only have one copy.
 
Rambaud said:
Time Machine backs up my VMs (both Parallels and Fusion).

I hvae to delete them on a regular basis and ensure I only have one copy.
Click to expand...

Well, any ideas of where I might find them? It would be really great if I managed to get it. I didn't tell Time Machine to neither backup nor ignore the files.
 
dschiller said:
Well, any ideas of where I might find them? It would be really great if I managed to get it. I didn't tell Time Machine to neither backup nor ignore the files.
Click to expand...
You won't. If it's not there, it's not there - this is actually a Parallels setting. Parallels defaults to telling TM to NOT back up virtual machines (at least it did in Version 3 - I think the default is to back them up in Version 4).
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
You won't. If it's not there, it's not there - this is actually a Parallels setting. Parallels defaults to telling TM to NOT back up virtual machines (at least it did in Version 3 - I think the default is to back them up in Version 4).
Click to expand...

Oh well, I guess it's back to the drawing board then. I wish this was better documented. BTW, I was running a fresh install of Parallels 4.0.
 
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