App store sees my backups?

I put this thread here because I didn't know where else to ask. The Apple App store is telling me I have an update available for The Unarchiver app. I downloaded and installed the update, but the alert keeps appearing every day. I think that somehow the app store application is seeing my CCC backup archives on an external drive. Those backups are, of course, the older version of The Unarchiver, but that's what is supposed to be there. I use the archiving function of CCC to keep those changed files so that if I have to go back to them, I can. I also run TM with its own history, but TM isn't bootable and my CCC drive is, so there are two different functions going on there. As an aside, I used to be the data center manager of a national security facility, where "redundancy" meant not only belts and suspenders, but rivets, staples, nails, screws, glue and hands to hold up those pants! From that experience, and a personal computer hard drive failure that lost a year of my wife's business books, I learned the criticality of redundant backups.

I don't want to disconnect the external drive as the backups are scheduled nightly. Is there any way to tell the AppStore app to ignore my external drives? I found nothing in System Preferences or the app itself.

This happened once before with one application (I think it was Evernote, but I'm not sure) and I got so frustrated with the constant notifications of the fact that there was an update that I went through all my CCC backups and deleted Evernote from every one. That stopped the notifications, but that seems a brute force way, and destroys the idea of a backup for that application.

DETAILS: MBP 17", early-2011, OSX 10.8.3. I'm the original owner and have no other user accounts other than me. I did buy The Unarchiver through the app store, it's not pirated.

If you're certain it's looking at the external external (Unmounting it and then checking for updates would prove/disprove that). I doubt it's check as a constant scan but likely uses the Spolight index.

In which case, I'd open Spotlight preferences - Privacy and drag the CCC external into there so that Spotlight doesn't index it.

Yeah, it's spotlight. Unfortunately, given my setup, I need to have those drives mounted. Hiding them from Spotlight worked to stop the update notifications, but then Spotlight can't see them when I'm looking for a file that has been removed from the main drives. I guess I'll just have to put up with the annoyance. Thanks for trying!

You could just use Time Machine for that function, as you say the CCC benefit is the bootable nature of the backup, where as the TM back has the searching, current, single file recovery ease to it's advantage.

Just a thought . . . .

Remember my comment in the original post about my background? To me, one backup is not much better than no backup. I have two of everything on separate devices. I lost my internal hard drive to a hardware failure and simultaneously lost the TM backup drive as well, which led to the loss of a year's worth of accounting data that had to be reconstructed. Now I have backups in two modes and two media. On two separate battery backup/power filters. Drives are cheap, redoing a year's worth of work is expensive. I also have an encrypted version of the most critical stuff in the cloud. Belts and suspenders and rivets, staples, nails, screws, glue and hands.

I've had personal computers since the 1970's and in that time have lost 4 hard drives. I have learned to expect them to fail. Spectacularly! On my wall is a platter from an IBM 3350 storage unit with the scar marks cut into the metal from where the heads crashed. It's a reminder of what can (and eventually will) happen.

When my wife retires and gets rid of her business, I'll archive off her accounting data on DVD to hold until the IRS audit period expires and then relax my backup redundancy. It's not needed for just surfing and reading email.

I'm not sure how disabling spotlight from indexing a disk impacts any of that but ok.

My original comment about unmounting was to prove/disagnose the issue. Not the solution. The solution was to disable indexing of the CCC drive not disable it's use.

I've had personal computers since the 1970's and in that time have lost 4 hard drives. I have learned to expect them to fail. Spectacularly! On my wall is a platter from an IBM 3350 storage unit with the scar marks cut into the metal from where the heads crashed. It's a reminder of what can (and eventually will) happen.

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Well said. I worked with "Big Iron" for years with the US Govt and have seen crashes that would make your eyes pop out. You can never have too many backups!

@MacInWin

What about this:

How to Exclude Hard Drives and Folders from Spotlight Index in Mac OS X

It seems you can exclude external drivers (or even specific folders) to not be indexed

I think that's what a put in my first post.

But thanks for the link

And I said I tried that in post 3 of the thread. That worked to kill the notifications, which is good, but it leaves my archives on those drives out of spotlight. That is not good, but more bearable. For now, I'm as good as its going to get. I guess I'll write an AppleScript to move the non-application files in those archives to a Spotlighted drive someday. Or restructure my CCC schedule to separate application from everything else. Frankly, what would be smarter would be for the App Store look only on the boot drive for updates and leave it to the owner to update externals.