Mac – How to force include files in Time Machine

aperturetime-machine

I'd like to force-include some files in Time Machine. Specifically I want to force-include "iPod Photo Cache" and "Thumbnails" in my Aperture Library.

I have checked this file:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist

but those folders are not in it, however Time Machine still does exclude them. Is there anywhere else that Time Machine checks for exclusions?

Aside: Why?

In case anyone wonders why I would want this. I have a Mac Mini which acts as a media server that all my iThings sync to. This Mac Mini is also the Backup server and it's set up nightly to pull media off various time machine sparsebundles into its own library. This way:

  1. Any iDevices can sync wirelessly any time they're plugged in, not just when laptops are on and not sleeping
  2. No extra data needs to get pushed over wifi at regular intervals. Everything is just grabbed from Time Machine which gets automatically updated, for free.

All this works pretty well 🙂 …that is until some Aperture or OS update started excluding the folders above for Aperture.

Best Answer

Open Terminal.app, type "cd " (Take care of the space after the cd) and drag your Aperture library in that window, then hit return. Now type

xattr -d com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem "iPod Photo Cache"
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem "Thumbnails"

Hit return again and do a backup.

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