Time Machine is the fantastic new backup feature built into OS X 10.5 Leopard. It’s pretty simple to set up and it will work if you leave all the defaults as they are. The defaults are fairly intelligent. For example, your Library/Caches is automatically excluded from the backup. However, if you wish to use space on your Time Machine disk efficiently you may wish to configure Time Machine to exclude a few more folders.

[tags]Apple, OS X, Leopard, Time Machine[/tags]

My first tip would be to create a folder called something like Temp in which you temporarily keep files you don’t want backed up. Once you’ve created this folder you can tell Time Machine not to back it up by taking the following steps:

1. Click on the Apple Logo in the Menu Bar and select System Preferences ...
2. Select the Time Machine preference pane.
3. If the lock icon on the lower left of the screen is locked click on it and authenticate to unlock the preference pane.
4. Click on the Options ... button.
5. Click on the + icon and select the folder to exclude

You may also want to consider excluding your Downloads folder.

At work I regularly store old backups and large ISO files which I do not want backed up. Here I have created a separate partition called Archive which I have also excluded from the backup.

Time Machine will try to back up all hard drives it sees (apart from the Time Machine drive of course), so you may also want to exclude and external hard drives you use from the backup.

Finally, if you listen to a lot of podcasts you may also want to prevent them from clogging up your backup. You can do this by excluding your Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts folder.