Help with Backup include pattern

Support
#1

It appears to be quite difficult to backup numerous folder paths and I can’t quite seem to get it. I would like to backup the following full paths:

Users/Jadon/Music/iTunes/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/TechSmith/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Notepad/backup/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Templates/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/OneNote/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Office/Recent/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer/iTunes/iTunesPrefs.xml
Users/Jadon/AppData/Local/Mozilla/
Users/Jadon/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data/Default/

I tried to create a pattern by adding each of the above as an “Include” pattern but that didn’t do the trick. I spent some time googling for an answer but was unable to find anything that I understood completely. Note, I tried the below just to backup iTunes and it still didn’t seem backup the entire folder.

+Users/
+Users/Jadon/
+Users/Jadon/Music/
+Users/Jadon/Music/iTunes/*

Thanks for the help in advance!

#2

Paths should be relative to the root of your duplicacy repository. Is the root of your duplicacy depository at c:\? Note, it’s not a “list of stuff to backup”; it’s a “filter of the stuff to backup, starting from the backup root”.

If you had multiple unrelated locations to backup you could symlink them into a new folder that would serve as repository root, but in your case since you only care about user data backup it would be more meaningful to init repo under /Users/Jadon/ and remove that string from the rules in your filters file.

You also might want to add * where you want to backup contents of the directory as opposed to directory only.

Example for your notepad backups, assuming repo is initialized at your home folder:

+AppData/
+AppData/Roaming/
+AppData/Roaming/Notepad/
+AppData/Roaming/Notepad/backup/*

Note, parser marches each line in sequence — if you don’t have a match for a folder — it won’t try to match contents

As a side note, it’s safer to backup everything by default and then write exclusion rules for the most egregious temporary locations with high derivative data turnover, which for most users are browser caches and temp folders. You can detect those by comparing what was picked up between sequential backups and writing filters to exclude clearly unnecessary data.

Extra costs of backing up unnecessary stuff here and there is negligible compared to the risk of missing some important file

#4

You need to add + in front of each line to “include”, and also +Users/ at the very top

Maybe “exclude all” in the end, to explicitly exclude everything that is not included?

-*

My advise however would still be to include everything by default (with +* at the end) and then explicitly exclude (with -) thing you sure you don’t need and that generate significant amount of turnover. You can also exclude folders by placing special file inside the directory — arguably that is better as this will be sticky.

#5

Sorry, I do have the “+” in front of each of those paths. When I copied the pattern it didn’t include that. I updated my previous post to reflect that. I also had +Users/ at the top as well. Not sure why that didn’t get pasted in here. I’ll go ahead though and add the “-” exclusion and see what happens.

You can also exclude folders by placing special file inside the directory — arguably that is better as this will be sticky.

Not sure I understand what this means.

*** Edit. I just completed a second backup and when I select to restore from that, the folder structure is correct and everything appears to be there. So odd.