Time Machine question

[Dimwhit]

So in my Movies folder, I have an alias to an external hard drive that has a bunch of large movie files on it. How does Time Machine back that up? Does it just back up that alias? Or does it follow the alias to the external drive and back up all those files, too? I'm going to have TM also back up that external drive, so I don't want to duplicate those backups.

 

[Morod]

In TM system preferences, under Options, you can tell TM what items to NOT back up. Hope this helps.
Morod

 

[Dimwhit]

In TM system preferences, under Options, you can tell TM what items to NOT back up. Hope this helps.
Morod

But if I tell it to not back up that alias to the external drive, will it then not back up the actual external drive, or just that alias file? I'm just wondering if TM treats aliases as anything other than a file that points somewhere.

 

[BobZune]

Acording to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1553788 aliases are not "followed" by TM - they are treated as just tiny files and not as links by the OS (and same by TM, per the Ars article linked from there).

 

[Dimwhit]

Excellent! Thanks Bob.