Time Machine and System Files

[crees!]

I've been backing up everything including system files with Time Machine for quite some time now. The question I have is that when you exclude the System folder, and when prompted choose to exclude all system files, does it just not back up any more system files from that point forward and leave the system files already backed up on the TM drive, or when removing all system files does it go back and remove all occurrences from your TM drive thus making more space available for your backups?

So when choosing to remove all system files and if it does not remove existing backups of those files which files/folders would those be that you could manually remove?

Thanks.

 

[flopticalcube]

It stops backing up going forward, I believe. I don't think you can individually remove a file from a TM backup.

 

[crees!]

It stops backing up going forward, I believe. I don't think you can individually remove a file from a TM backup.

Actually you can for folders and files. Select what you want to remove and then under the Action (gear) icon in Finder there's an option to "Delete all backups of 'file/folder'." This is once you're in TM. That option isn't available when you're just on your desktop.

 

[flopticalcube]

Actually you can for folders and files. Select what you want to remove and then under the Action (gear) icon in Finder there's an option to "Delete all backups of 'file/folder'." This is once you're in TM. That option isn't available when you're just on your desktop.

Ahh! I was looking at the desktop.

TBH, I use TM only to back up my working directories as I have CCC doing the bootable clones once a week.