How to add exceptions to Time Machine?

[ramparts]

I just got myself a 1 TB portable hard drive eek and so I'm finally backing up using Time Machine. It's great - I like the combination of beautiful Mac aesthetics and space-saving functionality. The problem is that I have a particularly large file which changes a lot - that is, my 15 GB Parallels virtual machine. So every time this has even a minor change, it looks like Time Machine backs up a new copy, which will start to fill up my 400 GB Time Machine partition fairly quickly. Is there any way to set this to either only be backed up, e.g. every week or month, or to have it never backed up except when I manually do so?

 

[spinnerlys]

System Preferences > Time Machine > Options

Here you can configure files, folders and volumes/drives, that are not to be backed up.
If you want to backup the file/folder again, you can deselect what you want, and hit the Back Up No menu option in the TM Menu Bar icon.

 

[ramparts]

Ah, blindingly simple. Thanks!

 

[ramparts]

I'd add: can anyone think of any other things (like large application files, maybe?) which should be treated like this - i.e., which are really big and change a lot, so will take up lots of valuable HD space?

 

[aristobrat]

Application files shouldn't really change, so I leave them on my "backup" list.

I exclude my Downloads folder and my Virtual Machines folders.

 

[jw2002]

I would also exclude the trash, the itunes podcasts directory, and any peer-to-peer file sharing directories.