Tip first, because the backstory ended up being longer to write out than I thought:
I’ve been using Time Machine for a few months now and recently ran into an issue where my backups were filling up too quickly. At first I just disconnected my external HDD and made a mental note to investigate the issue (haha free time), but ultimately only “made time” when it gave me a message like “hey, just wanted to let you know I’m deleting some of your older backups”.
Like hell you are, Time Machine. Like hell you are. We haven’t been in a relationship long enough for you to start telling me that I need to get rid of my things because there’s too much clutter in the house. I mean drive. I meant drive.
Aaaaanyway. It turns out there is a Quick and Easy way to get Time Machine to exclude things it really, really has no business backing up. Like, say, 50 GB worth of virtual machines. Stuff like that.
It’s actually pretty straightforward to do this and I think I can successfully capture it in two screenshots.
And now for some backstory:
As is probably obvious by now I do most of my development on a Mac. I was previously working on a 2012 Macbook Pro from work, but then when it started to have some weird issues it was supposed to be sent off to Apple, repaired, and rehomed while I got to work on a new 2015 Macbook Pro.
As with all things technology this didn’t go as smoothly as anyone would have desired. After going in over the weekend to diagnose the heat issue that wasn’t entirely the fault of the fans, I went to pick up my new 2015 Macbook Pro. While I was there asked if I could bring in the 2012 the next day, instead of dropping it off then, after making sure I could get everything on the new Macbook. Apple Genius bar said it was no problem, so hurray.
Except no hurray, because after I arrived home and turned on the new, shiny, 2015 Macbook Pro it kernel panicked on the first try. Yikes. So I restarted it, was eventually brought through the prompts that all Mac users are familiar with by now to sync all the things. Yay. And things seemed fine, for a time. Until bam. Panic. Shut down.
Ooookaaaay… so then I tried resetting the NVRAM. Rebooted. Seemed fine. Until, again, kernel panic and shut down. This happened a total of four times in the span of … maybe an hour IIRC. After that, I tried just letting the 2015 Mac idle instead of transferring my data onto it, but alas it still panicked just by being on – even when I wasn’t doing anything to it.
So I went back to the Genius Bar with the new 2015 Mac. Explained that it wasn’t the 2012 Mac they thought I’d be dropping off, but that new 2015 Mac had been kernel panicking even without me touching it. So then they tried to boot it and it didn’t boot at all, haha. They ran some hardware tests and everything passed so they tried booting it again and it still didn’t boot. So they handed me a new 2015 Macbook Pro no-(other)-questions asked. In their words “a brand new machine shouldn’t behave this way, we’ll just exchange it”.
Apple Genius bar = lovely people to work with.
Of course when the 2012 Macbook Pro started having heat issues I started to become more attentive with my backups. I didn’t use Time Machine, I just backed up my files to my Synology NAS. I figured that if and when I set up a new machine it would be the perfect time to “declutter” my environment and only install new things and set them up as I need them.
That was before I tried setting up two new environments in a week while also worrying about what would happen if my New New Macbook ended up with similar behavior problems and then I’d have to do it again.
So that’s when I decided something needed to happen and I started using Time Machine. Which brings us full circle to the Quick Tip at the top.
By the way, as for my New New Macbook Pro it is mostly problem free with the exception of some pesky networking issues…
The Coding Mant.is 