Time Machine & Deleted Files

[tsphipps]

Hi all,

Not sure if anyone can help here. Been trawling the net for answers and so far no joy.

I have been creating some very large video files over the past couple of days that were always destined for a seperate external drive so didn't want or need Time Machine to back them up and waste backup drive space (plus I back up wirelessly to another external drive via an Airport Extreme so not the fastest).

I switched off Time Machine, created the files on my desktop, moved them to the external drive, trashed them (and emptied the trash) and then switched Time Machine back on. However, Time Machine is still finding an additional 85GB of data to backup! I tried excluding the desktop from the backup selection but that made no difference. I assume this is something to do with Time Machine still seeing changed/created data residing on the drive although they have since been deleted from the directory.

I've found other posts suggesting to create a "Do Not Backup" folder to exclude from backups and use that as a temporary storage location which I have now done for future but I need to find out if there is anyway to stop it backing up these deleted files now.

Can anyone help please?

 

[satcomer]

First make a video folder where you save these large files. Then open System Preferences->Spotlight and press the + button and add your folder to the exclude lists.

 

[tsphipps]

Thanks Satcomer. So are you saying that I would need to exclude that "Do Not Backup" folder from Spotlight as well as Time Machine then?

Do you have any thoughts on how I might ask TM nicely to forget/ignore already deleted files to the tune of 85GB?

 

[Jagardn]

Time machine will back up external drives also if you don't exclude them. It bay be backing up your USB drive.

 

[tsphipps]

Yeah I did check this, there are no other drives being backed up.

Is there any way to get some sort of log from Time Machine detailing the files it thinks are due to be backed up?