Backup rule question

[Carillon]

I would like to create a backup rule that only backs up each user's Desktop and Documents folder while excluding ALL music and video files.

 

What is the best way to accomplish this? Thanks!

[Maser]

First: for each client, add the user's "Desktop" and "Documents" folders as "Favorite Folders" and only put those two folders in your script (or "Tag" them and just put the Tag in your script to be easier.)

 

This will save you from having to scan folders you don't intend to back up.

 

Then, your rule only has to focus on the music and video files (ignore the user's "Music" directory -- because you aren't backing up their entire "user" directory...)

 

So, you'd make an exclusion rule that would have lines like:

 

Any of the following are true:

 

file name ends with .mp3

file name ends with .m4a

file name ends with .wma

file name ends with .wav

file name ends with .ogg

file name ends with .avi

file name ends with .mov

file name ends with .divx

file name ends with .mkv

file name ends with

 

etc...

 

And then be sure to test it.

 

What this *won't* catch is a music/video file that doesn't have an extension on the name of the file, but this should catch the majority of stuff, I would think...

 

 

 

 

[Carillon]

Thanks for the reply but the clients have multiple users who use each Mac. Is my only option to add each users Desktop and Documents folders as a Favorite?

[Maser]

Well, no -- it would just be faster that way.

 

What you'd have to do in this case (probably) would be to mark the "Users" folder as a Favorite Folder, then the "include" section would contain something like:

 

Any of the following is true:

Folder name is Desktop

Folder name is Documents

 

Then the exclude section would contain what I specified above.

 

 

This would take a bit longer to run because it would need to scan the entire Users folder, but that's probably what you'd need to do. (It may or may not be faster to run to mark each user's "documents" and "desktop" folder as a FF, but I can't answer that for you without knowing how many clients you have per computer, etc...)

 

 

[Daniels]

In the exclude section you could say something like this:

 

Any of the following are true:

 

folder name contains Music

folder name contains Movies

[Maser]

Except that assumes that's where users put all their movies/music. I don't put everything in iTunes, so that wouldn't catch my stuff.

 

 

[Carillon]

Thanks for the responses... I like the idea of speeding things up so I would be curious if marking each user's Desktop and Documents folder as a favorite would be any faster than searching the User folder and backing up only those two folders.

 

Thoughts?

[Maser]

Well, this would depend on your user base and what they are doing and storing within their User account(s).

 

Remember: Backing up only "desktop" and "documents" leaves out their "Library" folder -- so all of their personal app preferences, their bookmarks, their e-mail (possibly?) would be scanned if you just scanned "Users" instead of the 2 Favorite Folders per account.

 

Would it take less time to scan everything, then match the rule vs. scanning two separate favorite folders? It's hard to say -- that would be entirely dependent upon how many files are in all the other directories.

 

 

However, if I were to guess: If it's a computer with *one* user account -- scanning the "Users" folder by itself would probably be faster.

 

If it's a computer with many multiple user accounts, scanning two favorite folders per account *might* be faster.

 

YMMV. Really, it all depends on how many files are in all the other folders. If each user has 50,000 music files in iTunes, you have to scan those (and match against those) so that'll add time.