time machine problem

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i want to create a backup of just my pictures folder with time machine, went into preferences and excluded all other folders and it still backs up 71gb, my pictures are only 4gb and my external hard drive is just 60gb so it won't do the backup due to lack of space.
i'm sure everything except pictures folders is excluded, please could someone give me some idea why this is happening or help me rectify?

thanks
 
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Unless I'm mistaken Time Machine is also backing up other files necessary for a full system restore. If you want to just backup your pictures with minimum extra files then it would be better to manually copy and paste your pictures over to your external hard drive. Basically the hard drive is a large thumb flash drive if that helps you understand the process better. Time Machine is better for people who want to backup their whole computer or at least most of it or if they like the restore feature of TM.

All my pictures are manually stored on two hard drives. The second hard drive is a backup of the first because the pictures are no longer on my computer.
 
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hi,
obviously i wasn't aware that time machine created an image of the os for restore, for certain reasons i wood much rather be able to just plug the drive in and have it done automaticaly.
is there no other way around this?
 
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chas_m

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Time Machine is awesome and it WILL save your rear end one day, BUT if you just want to back up the Pictures folder, you can certainly do that. Just not with Time Machine.

Buy an 8GB or larger thumb drive, drag pictures folder onto it. There, done.

OR you can use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner, and uncheck everything but your pictures folder. That would also work.
 

bobtomay

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Time Machine is just not designed for that. It is designed pretty strictly as a way to restore your drive in the case of a catastophic event. Want to backup one folder, try one of chas' suggestions.
 
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many thanks chas_m, the program you recommend does it perfectly and updates when i plug my drive in.

lesson learnt about the real purpose of time machine.
 
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Try SuperDuper

Yeah... thats the problem with Time machine. No flexibility. I had difficulty with it because what I wanted it to do was to know anything new that I'd added to my mac and add it to the full back up. It didn't want to do that. All or nothing---kind of PC-like actually.

So... you need to buy SuperDuper($27) but it will do back ups and also make your backup drive a fully functional start up drive, either in a partitition or in an external drive.

It will do it for nothing but if you want the incremental one where it notices anything new you've added and only adds that to the back up, then you need to actually pay the money.
 

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