MacOS – How to restore the Time Machine exclusion list from a Time Machine backup

macostime-machine

I reinstalled Yosemite clean, reformatting the disk before. I want to recover the Time Machine settings, specially the exclusion list, from the time machine backup of Maverics.

Any idea how to do it?

I copied com.apple.TimeMachine.plist located in /Library/Preferences/ but it didn't work.

any other idea?

thanks

Best Answer

Open that plist from your previous install and look for "SkipPaths". Under that key you should find the exclusion paths you had set on your previous install.

For example from my own it looks like this:

<key>SkipPaths</key>
<array>
    <string>~alistair/Documents/Virtual Machines</string>
    <string>~alistair/Downloads</string>
</array>

That would at least tell you which paths you had excluded before so you could re-add them through the Time Machine preferences pane in System Preferences.

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