Why can't I exclude files on a target?

[malones]

Hello,

I'd like to back up my main drive to an external target but leave a couple folders on the target untouched. I saw back in 2004 someone asked a similar question and the solution suggested was to partition the target drive. This seems a bit cumbersome. I'm wondering if this is still the only solution, and if so what is the reason? If I can easily ignore certain files/folders on the source, why isn't there a simple way to do the same for the target?

Thanks for any insight
A

[dnanian]

You can't do this, no, sorry. As far as the reason goes: we feel it's generally a good idea to separate your backup from your other data. It ensures you can restore with tools that can't be scripted at all...

[malones]

Dave,

Thanks for the quick response. I understand your reasoning now, although I still think excluding stuff on the target would be useful. Recently, for example, my system was corrupted. I had a complete backup that I'd made with superduper about three weeks prior, and I wanted to restore only my system files and apps while leaving the users folders alone (since I didn't want to overwrite 3 weeks of changes). It would be great if I could tell SD to restore only certain folders and not touch anything else, but I guess there's no way to do it -- maybe this could be an option that could be turned on in preferences? Anyway, keep up the great work.

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[dnanian]

In general, the solution in your case would be to simply archive-and-install OSX, rather than restore from a backup, no?

[malones]

Yes, in fact that's what I ended up doing. I just thought it would be handy to be able to restore a subset of a backup. It's not a huge deal.

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