{"id":28843,"date":"2020-05-04T13:43:45","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=28843"},"modified":"2020-05-04T13:44:01","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T17:44:01","slug":"arq-and-time-machine-exclusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/04\/arq-and-time-machine-exclusions\/","title":{"rendered":"Arq and Time Machine Exclusions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manuel Grabowski<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I figured there must be some way to find out what<\/em> data exactly changed inbetween two TM snapshots. There is<\/a>. I let that script run (for almost an entire day) and in the resulting output I was quickly able to find the directory that was responsible for almost the entire size of the changes: ~\/Library\/Arq\/<\/code>.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

So for months, my two primary backup strategies have negatively affected each other by slowing down to a grinding halt and consuming ungodly amounts of CPU power and fan spinnage.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The corresponding folder in Arq 6 is \/Library\/Application Support\/ArqAgent<\/tt>. Even though I recently started new Arq backups, and they contain only a small fraction of my files, that folder already contains a cache.noindex<\/tt> folder that’s 11 GB. (Due to its file permissions, that folder is no longer accessible in Finder, so I had to inspect it via Terminal and sudo<\/code>.)<\/p>\n

Because .noindex<\/tt> only applies to Spotlight, Time Machine is wasting time, energy, and space backing up these files. To exclude them from Time Machine, they’d have to be in a .nobackup<\/tt> folder or otherwise marked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I suppose there’s a reason that some people might<\/em> want to back up the Arq cache. It could be slow or expensive to redownload the cached data if you do need to restore from a backup. But I decided to add a manual exclusion in the Time Machine preferences.<\/p>\n\n

Sidenote: I’m now using Arq 6.2.11, which seems to work well except that unmounting an unrelated drive still causes other in-progress backups to abort.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n