Here’s the 2009 update to my “Exclude From Backup” AppleScript, which I published in a previous article.

The script excludes selected items from the Time Machine backup. I use it to exclude large downloads such as pirated TV shows Linux ISO images from the backup, so they don’t clutter up the backup disk.

The new features are:

• Notifications via Growl both for successful and failed exclusions. Growl is required, I don’t check for it
• Three different ways to launch the script and pass the files (see below)
• As a side effect of the previous one, the script now handles multiple files

The Growl notifications look like this:

There are three ways to use it:

1.) Via the Finder contextual menu item through Ranchero’s BigCat. This is what it could do before, and this method is still limited to one file at a time. Unfortunately the BigCat web page at Ranchero’s site is missing at the time of this writing, maybe it’s just temporary and it will come back. If not, use one of the other methods.

You must store the AppleScript in the Library/Application Support/Big Cat Scripts/Files folder in your home folder.

2.) The second way is via LaunchBar’s “Send to” feature: Select one or more items to be excluded, press and hold your activation shortcut, press the Tab key, type an abbreviation of the script’s name, e.g. “excl”, and hit return. This requires you to store the script in the Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder in your home folder.

Other launchers such as QuickSilver or Butler might work similarly, if they pass the affected files to the script’s open handler. In fact, since the open handler is a generic feature, there are probably many other ways to use this.

One of them is to save the script as a droplet, a stand-alone application onto which you can drop the icons of the files you want excluded. If you stick it in the Dock, it’s pretty convenient to use. The download below contains the droplet version in addition to the regular script.

3.) The third way is via FastScripts or Apple’s Script Menu: select the items to be excluded in the Finder and invoke the script from the menu or, in the case of FastScripts, via a keybord shortcut.

Download a zip file with the script file here: exclude-from-backup.zip