Mac – How to correct the exclusion list for Time Machine backup? Music is not listed for exclusion, but is excluded

Three things will need to come together for this to work:

1. The Filesystem on the SD card needs a .fseventsd hidden directory and the system to track all changes (which typically gets created automagically when you format the card as HFS+) I haven't seen anyone hack Time Machine to back up filesystems that don't register with Apple's file system events API.
2. Make a test backup once you've gotten the filesystem into one that Time Machine supports. You can then check if /Volumes/SD is included in the files for that backup by inspecting the preferences for that backup
3. If you need to manually include the system, you can add it by changing either the metadata flag that is causing the item to be skipped or by editing the system exclusion lists.

You will need to pick parts of these two questions and answers to find both the settings for a specific backup as well as where the various system exclusion rules are stored and configured.

• On OS X, what files are excluded by rule from a Time Machine backup?
• Where does Time Machine store its settings?

In short, it might be easier to use rsync or some other tool to copy the SD card contents to a drive that already is being backed up, but as long as you have total control over the drive and the system, you should be able to bend it to your will and get the SD card to be seen and backed up every time it's present and a backup happens.

The problem is that Time Machine is designed for HFS+ formatted volumes.

You might have luck with the Paragon NTFS driver but if the NTFS volume is case-sensitive and your normal mac partition is not, you will have problems backing both up to the same Time Machine volume.

You might be able to use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of the NTFS volume to an image file but not a bootable one.

Also check out this blog which talks about related NTFS issues.