How to Exclude Files and Directories From The Backup

If you are backing up a directory structure it is quite possible that some files within this structure will not be important and may be safely excluded from the backup.



LBackup supports the exclusion of files and and directories though regular expressions added to the file in the backup set configuration directory called excludes.txt.





Mac OS X Specific Information



Below are some files on Mac OS X that you may want to exclude when running backups. If you have a set of excludes directives for a specific setup then please add them to this page. Please keep in mind that it is highly recommend that you test the exclusion is working as expected and that any important files are actually being backup. After all if you accidently exclude the files you are trying to backup there is no point in backing up in the first place.



Exclude Everything From a Standard Mac OS X Install



Exclude The Mac OS X Trash

- .Trash/
- .Trashes
- Network Trash Folder/
- ._Network Trash Folder



Exclude The Mac OS X Volume Settings

- TheVolumeSettingsFolder/
- ._TheVolumeSettingsFolder



Exclude The Mac OS X Adaptive Hot File Clustering Information

- .hotfiles.btree



Exclude The Mac OS X Kernel Extension File

- Library/Extensions.kextcache



Exclude The Mac OS X Spotlight Directories

- .Spotlight-V100/
- /.fseventsd



Exclude Mac Desktop Database Files

- Desktop DB
- Desktop DF