Time Machine backing up excluded folders

[Spanky Deluxe]

I've been having a lot of trouble with Time Machine lately. I used to have a 300GB partition on a second drive dedicated to backups. Time machine is set up to backup just my user directory and the calculated backup size is 200gb. There are a couple of folders on my desktop that I also exclude. I've had it working this way for months now (before Snow Leopard came out).

I started getting problems a few weeks ago. I formatted my Time Machine drive and got it to start a backup again, however, it kept running out of space without being able to complete the backup. I've been ignoring it since then because I knew I'd be getting some extra hard drives this week.

After my new hard drive reshuffle, I now have a 500gb drive dedicated to Time Machine backups. My backup size is still only 200gb but my initial backup would count up to 205gb/205gb or whatever it was and then keep going for hours with both the "done" and the "total amount" numbers gradually going up. It finally completed and I see that my 500gb drive only has about 30gb free or so. A bit of right clicking and get info clicking later and I soon find the root of the problem. The two large folders on my desktop that I've set to exclude have been backed up.

Any ideas on how to solve this? I've tried killing the time machine settings file in the library and have rebuilt the exclusion list from scratch. I've also reformatted the backup drive several times. I've zeroed it once. Partitioned it into 16 partitions and wiped it again into one. Honestly, I'm clutching at straws now.

 

[StructAural]

I'm getting exactly this all of a sudden, did you solve it?

I upgraded my boot disk using SuperDuper and switched over, everything is fine except Time Machine.

I've erased the disk, excluded the stuff I want (which leaves a 274GBGB Time Machine Backup) and Time Machine starts copying the initial backup, says it's copying 274GB, gets to 274GB and carries on until the hard drive fills up (it's a 400GB partition) saying 350GB of 350GB copying etc., ie both numbers increment. I've done this a few times now, including trashing the com.apple.timemachine.prefs

When I check the package for time machine .inprogress I find it's copied all my excluded folders (which brings the total to 650GB too much for the Time Machine disk), even though originally it had worked it all out..

anyone got any ideas?

 

[StructAural]

Oh well,

I've had to go back to SuperDuper! and use its scripting to exclude files (instructions here). I'll just have to remember to backup more often and no time machine (which admittedly I've only used once) so a straight clone is probably more useful.
I use SmartBackup to backup my excluded big files onto other drives anyway.